The Public Domain Poems & Prose of Wallace
Stevens
All the following poems and prose pieces were published in periodicals before
1923 and hence are in the U.S. Public Domain. Some are not yet available online
this document will be updated as they become available. Wallace Stevens died in
1955, and his works may still be in copyright in other parts of the world.
Please check your country's copyright laws before using this.
Page
Anecdote of Canna
C64
4
Anecdote of Men bv the Thousand
C60
4
Anecdote of the Jar *
C67
5
Another Weeping Woman t
C72
5
The Apostrophe to Vincentine
C63
5
Architecture for the Adoration of Beauty
C64
6
Autumn
7
Ballade of the Pink Parasol
C35
8
Banal Soiourn *
C67
8
Bantams in Pine-Woods t
C76
9
The Bird with the Coppery, Keen
Claws
C7 3
9
Bowl
C53
10
Carlos among the Candles
C57
10
Carnet de Voyage
C46
14
Chronic Complaint
C39
16
Colloguv with a Polish Aunt *
C67
16
Colonial Hall
C40
16
The Combination Ticket
Cl 7
16
Cortege for Rosenbloom
C69
16
The Cuban Doctor t
C72
17
The Curtains in the House of the
Metaphysician
* C67
17
Cv est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule,
et Les Unze
Mille
Vieraes
C49
18
A Dav in February
C5
18
Depression Before Spring
C60
19
Disillusionment of Ten O'clock
C51
19
The Doctor of Geneva t
C72
19
Domination of Black
C53
20
Earthy Anecdote
C61/C66
21
The Emperor of Icecream t
C76
21
Explanation
B7
22
Exposition of the Contents of a
Cab *
C67
22
Fabliau of Florida *
C67
23
The Fence Plan
C21
23
The Fence Plan Again
C28
23
The Florist Wears Knee-Breeches
C53
23
Four Characters
C45
23
Frocrs Eat Butterflies, Snakes Eat Frogs, Hogs Eat Snakes,
Men Eat Hogs i
C76
24
From a Junk
C47
24
From the Misery of Don Joost t
C72
25
Gray Room
C58
25
Gubbinal t
C72
25
Gymnastic Decrepitude
C24
26
Hawkins of Cold Cape
Cl 9
26
1
Her First Escapade
C3
30
Hibiscus on the Sleepincr Shores t
C72
30
The Hicrher Life
C9
30
A Hicrh-toned Old Christian Woman $
C76
31
Home Aqain
C47
32
Homunculus et la Belle Etoile *
C67
32
Hvmn from a Watermelon Pavilion
C74
33
In Battle
B6
34
The Indicro Glass in the Grass *
C67
34
Infanta Marina
C68
34
Inscription for a Monument
C53
35
In the Dead of Nicrht
C36
36
Invective Acrainst Swans
C68
36
Iron Palincrs
C42
36
"Lettres d'un Soldat" I - IX
C59
36
Life is Motion
C66
39
The Load of Suqar Cane t
C72
39
Local Color
C31
40
Lulu Gay
C70
40
Lulu Morose
C70
40
The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad
C71
40
Meditation
C58
41
Memorial and the Summer School
C38
41
Memorial Tablets
C43
41
Metaphors of a Magnifico
C60
41
Moment of Licrht
C62
42
Le Monocle de Mon Oncle
C65
43
A Musical Sucrcrestion
C27
46
Nicrht Sonq
C32
46
Nuances of a Theme bv Williams
C64
46
The Nymph
Cl 4
46
0, Florida, Venereal Soil i
C76
49
Ode
B2
50
Of Heaven, Considered as a Tomb t
C72
50
Of the Surface of Thincrs *
C67
50
On the Manner of Addressincr Clouds t
C72
51
The Ordinary Women i
C76
51
Outside the Hospital
C23
52
Palace of the Babies t
C72
52
The Paltrv Nude Starts on a Sprincr Vovacre *
C67
53
Part of His Education
C8
54
Peter Parasol *
C67
57
Peter Ouince at the Clavier
C50
57
Phases
C48
59
The Place of the Solitaires *
C67
60
The Plot acrainst the Giant
B7
60
Ploughing on Sunday *
C67
61
Political Interests
C22
61
The Present Cheer
C34
61
Primordia
C56
62
Pursuit
Cll
63
Ouatrain 'Go not, voung cloud'
C13
64
Ouatrain 'He sought the music'
C41
64
Records of Our Times
Cl 6
64
The Retiring Board
C15
64
The Revelation
C12
64
2
Seclusion
C44
64
The Silver Plough-boy
C50
64
Six Significant Landscapes
C53
65
Smoking in Brooks House
C29
66
The Snow Man t
C72
66
Song 'Ah, ves ! bevond these barren walls'
Cl 8
67
Song 'She loves me or loves me not'
C6
67
Song 'There are great things doing'
C53
67
Sonnet 'Cathedrals are not built along the sea'
C8a
68
Sonnet 'Come, said the world'
C30
68
Sonnet 'If we are leaves that fall'
C4
68
Sonnet 'I strode along mv beaches'
CIO
69
Sonnet 'Lo, even as I passed'
C37
69
Sonnet 'There shines the morning star'
C7
69
Stars at Tallapoosa
C75
70
Street Songs
C25
70
Sunday Morning
C52
72
Tattoo
C53
74
Tea
C49
74
Tea at the Palaz of Hoon t
C72
74
Theory
B7
75
Thirteen Wavs of Looking at a Blackbird
C58
75
Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise
C54
77
To the Morn
85
To the Roaring Wind
C56
85
To the One of Fictive Music
C77
85
The University Chorus
C20
86
Usherships
C33
86
Valiev Candle
C58
86
Vita Mea
C2
86
Warren House Library
C26
87
The Weeping Burgher *
C67
87
Who Lies Dead?
Cl
87
The Wind Shifts
C58
87
The Worms at Heaven's Gate
C55
88
* indicates that the poem was originally part of Pecksniff iana in Poetry: A Magazine of
Verse Vol . 15, No. 1
t indicates that the poem was originally part of S ur ma Guzzla Gracile in Poetry: A
Magazine of Verse Vol. 19, No. 1
i indicates that the poem was originally part of Revue in Dial, LXXIII (July 1922)
C numbers indicate the records in Samuel French Morse's Wallace Stevens
Checklist: http : / /hdl . handle . net/2027/inu. 32000011560093
In his early poems, Stevens used a number of pseudonyms: Carrol More, R.
Jerries, John Morris 2nd, Henry Marshall. These are authenticated in French
Morse's checklist and the following books:
Wallace Stevens, New York, and Modernism by Lisa Goldfarb, Bart Eeckhout
Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction by Edward Ragg
A Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry by Neil Roberts
Many of the undergraduate prose pieces (1898 - 1900) concern university matters,
but are included in the list for completeness.
3
Anecdote of Canna
The Little Review: A Magazine of the Arts — Making No Compromise with the Public Taste
Vol. 5, No. 8: An American Number
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1298923644312504.pdf
Huge are the canna in the dreams of
X, the mighty thought, the mighty man.
They fill the terrace of his capitol .
His thought sleeps not. Yet thought that wakes
In sleep may never meet another thought
Or thing . . . Now day-break comes . . .
X promenades the dewy stones.
Observes the canna with a clinging eye.
Observes and then continues to observe.
Anecdote of Men by the Thousand
The Little Review: A Magazine of the Arts — Making No Compromise with the Public Taste
Vol. 5, No. 2: American Number
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1298919308562503.pdf
The soul, he said, is composed
Of the external world.
There are men of the East, he said.
Who are the East.
There are men of a province
Who are that province .
There are men of a valley
Who are that valley.
There are men whose words
Are as natural sounds
Of their places
As the cackle of toucans
In the place of toucans.
The mandoline is the instrument
Of a place .
Are there mandolines of Western mountains?
Are there mandolines of Northern moonlight?
The dress of a woman of Lhassa,
In its place.
Is an invisible element of that place
Made visible.
4
* Anecdote of the Jar
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 15, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686500812500.pdf
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it.
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush.
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
f Another Weeping Woman
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 19, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686523296875.pdf
Pour the unhappiness out
From your too bitter heart.
Which grieving will not sweeten.
Poison grows in this dark.
It is in the water of tears
Its black blooms rise.
The magnificent cause of being--
The imagination, the one reality
In this imagined world--
Leaves you
With him for whom no phantasy moves.
And you are pierced by a death.
The Apostrophe to Vincentine
Modern School, V, 12, Dec 1918 Not found online
I
I figured you as nude between
Monotonous earth and dark blue sky.
It made you seem so small and lean
And nameless.
Heavenly Vincentine .
II
I saw you then, as warm as flesh.
Brunette ,
5
But yet not too brunette.
As warm, as clean
Your dress was green.
Was whited green.
Green Vincentine.
III
Then you came walking.
In a group
Of human others.
Voluble .
Yes: you came walking,
Vincentine .
Yes: you came talking.
IV
And what I knew you felt
Came then.
Monotonous earth I saw become
Illimitable spheres of you.
And that white animal, so lean.
Turned Vincentine,
Turned heavenly Vincentine.
And that white animal, so lean.
Turned heavenly, heavenly Vincentine.
Architecture for the Adoration of Beauty
The Little Review:
A Magazine of the Arts — Making No Compromise with the Public Taste
Vol. 5, No. 8: An American Number
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1298923644312504.pdf
I
What manner of building shall we build for
the adoration of beauty?
Let us design this chastel de chastete,
De pensee . .
Never cease to deploy the structure . . .
Keep the laborers shouldering plinths . . .
Pass the whole of life earing the clink of the
chisels of the stone-cutters cutting the stones.
II
In this house, what manner of utterance shall
there be?
What heavenly dithyramb
And cantilene?
What niggling forms of gargoyle patter?
Of what shall the speech be.
In that splay of marble
And of obedient pillars?
III
And how shall those come vested that come there?
In their ugly reminders?
6
Or gaudy as tulips?
As they climb the stairs
To the group of Flora Coddling Hecuba?
As they climb the flights
To the closes
Overlooking whole seasons?
IV
Let us build the building of light.
Push up the towers
To the cock-tops .
These are the pointings of our edifice.
Which, like a gorgeous palm.
Shall tuft the commonplace.
These are the window-sill
On which the quiet moonlight lies.
V
How shall we hew the sun.
Split it and make blocks.
To build a ruddy palace?
How carve the violet moon
To set in nicks?
Let. us fix portals. East and West,
Abhorring green-blue North and blue-green South.
Our chiefest dome a demoiselle of gold.
Pierce the interior with pouring shafts.
In diverse chambers.
Pierce, too, with buttresses of coral air
And purple timbers.
Various argentines.
Embossings of the sky.
VI
And, finally, set guardians in the grounds.
Gray, grewsome grumblers .
For no one proud, nor stiff.
No solemn one, nor pale.
No chafferer, may come
To sully the begonias, nor vex
With holy or sublime ado
The kremlin of kermess.
VII
Only the lusty and the plenteous
Shall walk
The bronze-filled plazas
And the nut-shell esplanades.
Autumn
The Red and Black, I, 3, Jan 1898 Reading Boy's High School. Not found online
N.B. Not included in French Morse's Checklist.
Long lines of coral light
And evening star.
One shade that leads the night
7
On from afar.
And I keep, sorrowing.
This sunless zone.
Waiting and resting here.
In calm above.
Ballade of the Pink Parasol
Carrol More pseud.
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX, 6, 23 May 1900 Not found online
I pray thee, where is the old-time wig.
And where is the lofty hat?
Where is the maid on the road in her gig.
And where is the fire-side cat?
Never was sight more fair than that.
Outshining, outreaching them all.
There in the night where lovers sat-
But where is the pink parasol?
Where in the park is the dark spadille
With scent of lavender sweet.
That never was held in the mad quadrille.
And where are the slippered feet?
Ah! we'd have given a pound to meet
The card that wrought our fall
The card that none other of all could beat-
But where is the pink parasol?
Where is the roll of the old calash.
And the jog of the light sedan?
Whence Chloe ' s diamond brooch would flash
And conquer poor peeping man.
Answer me, where is the painted fan
And the candles bright on the wall;
Where is the coat of yellow and tan-
But where is the pink parasol?
Prince, these baubles are far away.
In the ruin of palace and hall.
Made dark by the shadow of yesterday--
But where is the pink parasol?
* Banal Sojourn
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 15, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686500812500.pdf
Two wooden tubs of blue hydrangeas stand at the foot of the stone steps .
The sky is a blue gum streaked with rose. The trees are black.
The grackles crack their throats of bone in the smooth air.
Moisture and heat have swollen the garden into a slum of bloom.
Pardie ! Summer is like a fat beast, sleepy in mildew.
Our old bane, green and bloated, serene, who cries,
"That bliss of stars, that princox of evening heaven!" reminding of seasons.
When radiance came running down, slim through the bareness.
And so it is one damns that green shade at the bottom of the land.
For who can care at the wigs despoiling the Satan ear?
8
And who does not seek the sky unfuzzed, soaring to the princox ?
One has a malady, here, a malady. One feels a malady.
Bantams in Pine- Woods
The Dial, LXXIII, 1, Jul 1922 One of the poems appearing under the title "Revue"
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp. 3901 503 1076568?urlappend=%3Bseq=125
Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!
Damned universal cock, as if the sun
Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.
Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal.
Your world is you. I am my world.
You ten-foot poet among inchlings . Fat!
Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines.
Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs.
And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos .
The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws
Broom: An International Magazine of the Arts, Volume 1, Number 2, December 1921
http://bluemountain. princeton.edu/bluemtn/cgi-bin/bluemtn? a=d&d=bmtnaap 1921 12-0 1.2. 23&e= en-20— 1— txt-txIN-
Above the forest of the parakeets,
A parakeet of parakeets prevails,
A pip of life amid a mort of tails.
(The rudiments of tropics are around.
Aloe of ivory, pear of rusty rind) .
His lids are white because his eyes are blind.
He is not paradise of parakeets.
Of his gold ether, golden alguazil.
Except because he broods there and is still.
Panache upon panache, his tails deploy
Upward and outward, in green-vented forms.
His tip a drop of water full of storms.
But though the turbulent tinges undulate
As his pure intellect applies its laws.
He moves not on his coppery, keen claws.
He munches a dry shell while he exerts
His will, yet never ceases, perfect cock.
To flare, in the sun-pallor of his rock.
9
Bowl
Others; a magazine of the new verse, v. II, No. 3, Mar 1916
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ucl.b3297635
For what emperor
Was this bowl of Earth designed?
Here are more things
Than on any bowl of the Sungs,
Even the rarest —
Vines that take
The various obscurities of the moon.
Approaching rain
And leaves that would be loose upon the wind.
Pears on pointed trees.
The dresses of women.
Oxen . ...
I never tire
To think of this.
Carlos among the Candles
A dramatic monologue in prose
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 11, No. 3
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1210698791484375.pdf
The stage is indistinguishable when the curtain rises. The room represented is
semi-circular . In the center, at the back, is a large round window, covered by
long curtains. There is a door at the right and one at the left. Farther forward
on the stage there are two long, low, wooden tables, one at the right and one at
the left. The walls and the curtains over the window are of a dark reddish-
purple, with a dim pattern of antique gold.
Carlos is an eccentric pedant of about forty. He is dressed in black. He wears
close-fitting breeches and a close-fitting , tightly-buttoned, short coat with
long tails. His hair is rumpled. He leaps upon the stage through the door at the
right. Nothing is visible through the door. He has a long thin white lighted
taper, which he holds high above his head as he moves, fantastically , over the
stage, examining the room in which he finds himself .
When he has completed examining the room, he tip-toes to the table at the right
and lights a single candle at the edge of the table nearest the front of the
stage. It is a thin black candle, not less than two feet high. All the other
candles are like it. They give very little light.
He speaks in a lively manner, but is over-nice in sounding his words.
As the candle begins to burn, he steps back, regarding it. Nothing else is
visible on the table.
Carlos :
How the solitude of this candle penetrates me! I light a candle in the darkness.
It fills the darkness with solitude, which becomes my own. I become a part of
the solitude of the candle ... of the darkness flowing over the house and into
it. . . This room . . . and the profound room outside. . . Just to go through a
door, and the change. . . the becoming a part, instantly, of that profounder
room . . . and equally to feel it communicating, with the same persistency, its
own mood, its own influence . . . and there, too, to feel the lesser influences
10
of the shapes of things, of exhalations, sounds ... to feel the mood of the
candle vanishing and the mood of the special night coming to take its place. . .
[He sighs. After a pause he pirouettes , and then continues . ']
I was always affected by the grand style. And yet I have been thinking neither
of mountains nor of morgues. . . To think of this light and of myself ... it
is a duty. ... Is it because it makes me think of myself in other places in
such a light . . . or of other people in other places in such a light? How true
that is: other people in other places in such a light. . . If I looked in at
that window and saw a single candle burning in an empty room. . . but if I saw a
figure. . . If, now, I felt that there was someone outside. . . The vague
influence . . . the influence that clutches. . . But it is not only here and
now. . . It is in the morning . . . the difference between a small window and a
large window ... a blue window and a green window. . . It is in the afternoon
and in the evening ... in effects, so drifting, that I know myself to be
incalculable, since the causes of what I am are incalculable. . .
[He springs toward the table , flourishing his taper. At the end farthest from
the front of the stage, he discovers a second candle, which he lights. He goes
back to his former position.]
The solitude dissolves. . . The light of two candles has a meaning different
from the light of one . . . and an effect different from the effect of one. . .
And the proof that that is so, is that I feel the difference. . . The
associations have drifted a little and changed, and I have followed in this
change. . . If I see myself in other places in such a light, it is not as I saw
myself before. If I see other people in other places in such a light, the people
and places are different from the people and places I saw before. The solitude
is gone. It is as if a company of two or three people had just separated, or as
if they were about to gather. These candles are too far apart.
[He flourishes his taper above the table and finds a third candle in the center
of it, which he lights.]
And yet with only two candles it would have been a cold and respectable company;
for the feeling of coldness and respectability persists in the presence of
three, modified a little, as if a kind of stateliness had modified into a kind
of elegance. . . How far away from the isolation of the single candle, as
arrogant of the vacancy around it as three are arrogant of association. . . It
is no longer as if a company had just separated. It is only as if it were about
to gather . . . as if one were soon to forget the room because of the people in
the room . . . people tempered by the lights around them, affected by the lights
around them . . . sensible that one more candle would turn this formative
elegance into formative luxury.
[He lights a fourth candle. He indulges his humor.]
And the suggestion of luxury into the suggestion of magnificence.
[He lights a fifth candle.]
And the beginning of magnificence into the beginning of splendor.
[He lights a sixth candle. He sighs deeply.]
In how short a time have I been solitary, then respectable— in a company so cold
as to be stately, then elegant, then conscious of luxury, even magnificence ;
and now I come, gradually, to the beginning of splendor. Truly, I am a modern.
[He dances around the room.]
11
To have changed so often and so much . . . or to have been changed ... to have
been carried by the lighting of six candles through so many lives and to have
been brought among so many people. . . This grows more wonderful. Six candles
burn like an adventure that has been completed. They are established. They are a
city . . . six common candles . . . seven. . .
[He lights another and another , until he has lighted twelve , saying after them,
in turn : ]
Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
[Following this, he goes on tip-toe to the center of the stage, where he looks
at the candles . Their brilliance has raised his spirits to the point of gaiety.
He turns from the lighted table to face the dark one at the left. He holds his
taper before him.]
Darkness again . . . as if a night wind had come blowing. . . but too weakly to
fling the cloth of darkness.
[He goes to the window, draws one of the curtains a little and peers out. He
sees nothing.]
I had as lief look into night as look into the dark corner of a room. Darkness
expels me.
[He goes forward, holding his taper high above him, until he comes to the table
at the left. He finds this covered with candles, like the table at the right,
and lights them, with whimsical motions , one by one. When all the candles have
been lighted, he runs to the center of the stage, holding his hands over his
eyes. Then he returns to the window and flings aside the curtains . The light
from the window falls on the tall stalks of flowers outside . The flowers are
like hollyhocks , but they are unnaturally large, of gold and silver. He speaks
exci tedly. ]
Where now is my solitude and the lonely figure of solitude? Where now are the
two stately ones that left their coldness behind them? They have taken their
bareness with them. Their coldness has followed them. Here there will be silks
and fans . . . the movement of arms . . . rumors of Renoir . . . coiffures . . .
hands . . . scorn of Debussy . . . communications of body to body. . . There
will be servants, as fat as plums, bearing pineapples from the Azores . . .
because of twenty-four candles, burning together, as if their light had
dispelled a phantasm, falling on silks and fans . . . the movement of arms. . .
The pulse of the crowd will beat out the shallow pulses. . . it will fill me.
[A strong gust of wind suddenly blows into the room, extinguishing several of
the candles on the table at the left. He runs to the table at the left and
looks, as if startled, at the extinguished candles. He buries his head in his
arms . ]
That, too, was phantasm. . . The night wind came into the room. . . The fans are
invisible upon the floor.
[In a burst of feeling, he blows out all the candles that are still burning on
the table at the left. He crosses the stage and stands before the table at the
right. After a moment he goes slowly to the back of the stage and draws the
curtains over the window. He returns to the table at the right.]
What is there in the extinguishing of light? It is like twelve wild birds flying
in autumn.
[He blows out one of the candles.]
12
It is like an eleven-limbed oak tree, brass-colored in frost.. . . Regret. . .
[He blows out another candle.]
It is like ten green sparks of a rocket, oscillating in air. . .The
extinguishing of light . . . how closely regret follows it.
[He blows out another candle.]
It is like the diverging angles that follow nine leaves drifting in water, and
that compose themselves brilliantly on the polished surface.
[He blows out another candle.]
It is like eight pears in a nude tree, flaming in twilight. . .The extinguishing
of light is like that. The season is sorrowful. The air is cold.
[He blows out another candle.]
It is like the six Pleiades, and the hidden one, that makes them seven.
[He blows out another candle.]
It is like the seven Pleiades, and the hidden one, that makes
them six.
[He blows out another candle.]
The extinguishing of light is like the five purple palmations of cinquefoil
withering. . . It is full of the incipiencies of darkness ... of desolation
that rises as a feeling rises. . . Imagination wills the five purple palmations
of cinquefoil. But in this light they have the appearance of withering. . . To
feel and, in the midst of feeling, to imagine . . .
[He blows out another candle.]
The extinguishing of light is like the four posts of a cadaver, two at its head
and two at its feet, to-wit: its arms and legs.
[He blows out another candle.]
It is like three peregrins, departing.
[He blows out another candle.]
It is like heaven and earth in the eye of the disbeliever.
[He blows out another candle. He dances around the room. He returns to the
single candle that remains burning.]
The extinguishing of light is like that old Hesper, clapped upon by clouds.
[He stands in front of the candle , so as to obscure it.]
The spikes of his light bristle around the edge of the bulk. The spikes bristle
among the clouds and behind them. There is a spot where he was bright in the
sky. . . It remains fixed a little in the mind.
[He opens the door at the right. Outside, the night is as blue as water. He
crosses the stage and opens the door at the left. Once more he flings aside the
13
curtains. He extinguishes his taper. He looks out. He speaks with elation.]
Oh, ho! Here is matter beyond invention.
[He springs through the window. Curtain.]
Carnet de Voyage
The Trend, VII, 6, Sep 1914 Not found online
I. An odor from a star
An odor from a star
Comes to my fancy, slight.
Tenderly spiced and gay.
As if a seraph's hand
Unloosed the fragrant silks
Of some sultana, bright
In her soft sky. And pure
It is, and excellent.
As if a seraph's blue
Fell, as a shadow falls.
And his warm body shed
Sweet exhalations, void
Of our despised decay.
II. One More Sunset
The green goes from the corn.
The blue from all the lakes.
And the shadows of the mountains mingle in the sky.
Far off, the still bamboo
Grows green; the desert pool
Turns gaudy turquoise for the chanting caravan.
The changing green and blue
Flow round the changing earth;
And all the rest is empty wondering and sleep.
III. Here the grass grows
Here the grass grows.
And the wind blows .
And in the stream.
Small fishes gleam.
Blood-red and hue
Of shadowy blue.
And amber sheen.
And water-green.
And yellow flash.
And diamond ash.
And the grass grows.
And the wind blows .
IV. She that winked her sandal fan
She that winked her sandal fan
14
Long ago in gray Japan--
She that heard the bell intone
Rendezvous by rolling Rhone--
How wide the spectacle of sleep.
Hands folded, eyes too still to weep!
V. I am weary of the plum
I am weary of the plum and of the cherry.
And that buff moon in evening's aquarelle,
I have no heart within to make me merry.
I nod above the books of Heaven or Hell.
All things are old. The new-born swallows fare
Through the Spring twilight on dead September's wing.
The dust of Babylon is in the air.
And settles on my lips the while I sing.
VI. Man from the waste evolved
Man from the waste evolved
The Cytherean glade.
Imposed on battering seas
His keel's dividing blade.
And sailed there, unafraid.
The isle revealed his worth.
It was a place to sing in
And honor noble life.
For white doves to wing in.
And roses to spring in.
VII. Chinese Rocket
There, a rocket in the Wain
Brings primeval night again.
All the startled heavens flare
From the Shepherd to the Bear--
When the old-time dark returns,
Lo, the steadfast lady burns
Her curious lantern to disclose
How calmly the White River flows!
VIII. On an Old Guitar
It was a simple thing
For her to sit and sing,
"Hey nonino ! "
This year and that befell,
(Time saw and Time can tell).
With a hey and a ho--
Under the peach-tree, play
Such mockery away.
Hey nonino !
15
Chronic Complaint
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (June 2, 1900), 97-98. Not found online.
* Colloquy with a Polish Aunt
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 15, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686500812500.pdf
Elle savait toutes les legendes du Paradis et tous les contes
de la Pologne . Revue des Deux Mondes
She
How is it that my saints from Voragine,
In their embroidered slippers, touch your spleen?
He
Old pantaloons, duenna of the spring!
She
Imagination is the will of things ....
Thus, on the basis of the common drudge.
You dream of women, swathed in indigo.
Holding their books toward the nearer stars.
To read, in secret, burning secrecies ....
Colonial Hall
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (June 2, 1900), 98. Not found online.
The Combination Ticket
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (Mar. 10, 1900), 2. Not found online.
Cortege for Rosenbloom
The Measure, 1, Mar 1921
Anthology of magazine verse 1921
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp. 390 15059379258?urlappend=%3Bsea= 182
Now the wry Rosenbloom is dead
And his finical carriers tread.
On a hundred legs, the tread
Of the dead.
Rosenbloom is dead.
They carry the wizened one
Of the color of horn
To the sullen hill.
Treading a tread
In unison for the dead.
Rosenbloom is dead.
The tread of the carriers does not halt
On the hill, but turns
Up the sky.
They are bearing his body into the sky.
16
It is the infants of misanthropes
And the infants of nothingness
That tread
The wooden ascents
Of the ascending of the dead.
It is turbans they wear
And boots of fur
As they tread the boards
In a region of frost, .
Viewing the frost.
To a chirr of gongs
And a chitter of cries
And the heavy thrum
Of the endless tread
That they tread.
To a jabber of doom
And a jumble of words
Of the intense poem
Of the strictest prose
Of Rosenbloom.
And they bury him there.
Body and soul.
In a place in the sky.
The lamentable tread!
Rosenbloom is dead.
f The Cuban Doctor
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 19, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686523296875.pdf
I went to Egypt to escape
The Indian, but the Indian struck
Out of his cloud and from his sky.
This was no worm bred in the moon.
Wriggling far down the phantom air.
And on a comfortable sofa dreamed.
The Indian struck and disappeared.
I knew my enemy was near — I,
Drowsing in summer's sleepiest horn.
* The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 15, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686500812500.pdf
It comes about that the drifting of these curtains
Is full of long motions; as the ponderous
Deflations of distance; or as clouds
Inseparable from their afternoons;
Or the changing of light, the dropping
Of the silence, wide sleep and solitude
Of night, in which all motion
17
Is beyond us, as the firmament.
Up-rising and down-falling, bares
The last largeness, bold to see.
Cy est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille
Vierges
Rogue, I, 1, 15 Mar 1915; Others: an anthology of the new verse (1917)
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.3901 500820632 l?urlappend=%3Bseq=l 13
Ursula, in a garden, found
A bed of radishes.
She kneeled upon the ground
And gathered them.
With flowers around.
Blue, gold, pink and green.
She dressed in red and gold brocade
And in the grass an offering made
Of radishes and flowers.
She said, "My dear.
Upon your altars,
I have placed
The marguerite and coquelicot.
And roses
Frail as April snow;
But here"; she said,
"Where none can see,
I make an offering, in the grass.
Of radishes and flowers."
And then she wept
For fear the Lord would not accept.
The good Lord in His garden sought
New leaf and shadowy tinct.
And they were all his thought.
He heard her low accord.
Half prayer and half ditty.
And he felt a subtle quiver.
That was not heavenly love.
Or pity.
This is not writ
In any book.
A Day in February
The Harvard Advocate, LXVI (Mar. 6, 1899) , 135-36. Not found online
18
Depression Before Spring
The Little Review:
A Magazine of the Arts — Making No Compromise with the Public Taste
Vol. 5, No. 2: American Number
http://modiourn.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1298919308562503.pdf
The cock crows
But no queen rises.
The hair of my blonde
Is dazzling.
As the spittle of cows
Threading the wind.
Ho ! Ho !
But ki-ki-ri-ki
Brings no rou-cou.
No rou-cou-cou.
But no queen comes
In slipper green.
Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock
Rogue, I, 1 , 15 Mar 1915
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns .
None are green.
Or purple with green rings.
Or green with yellow rings.
Or yellow with blue rings .
None of them are strange.
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures .
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles .
Only, here and there, an old sailor.
Drunk and asleep in his boots.
Catches Tigers
In red weather.
f The Doctor of Geneva
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 19, No. 1
http://modiourn.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686523296875.pdf
The doctor of Geneva stamped the sand
That lay impounding the Pacific swell.
Patted his stove-pipe hat and tugged his shawl.
Lacustrine man had never been assailed
By such long-rolling opulent cataracts.
Unless Racine or Bossuet held the like.
19
He did not quail. A man so used to plumb
The multifarious heavens felt no awe
Before these visible, voluble delugings.
Which yet found means to set his simmering mind
Spinning and hissing with oracular
Notations of the wild, the ruinous waste.
Until the steeples of his city clanked and sprang
In an unburgherly apocalypse.
The doctor used his handkerchief and sighed.
Domination of Black
Others; a magazine of the new verse, v. II, No. 3, Mar 1916
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ucl.b3297635
At night, by the fire.
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves.
Repeating themselves.
Turned in the room.
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes : but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding —
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks .
The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room.
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry — the peacocks .
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire.
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire.
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?
Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
I saw how the night came.
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks.
I felt afraid —
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks .
20
Earthy Anecdote
Others Vol. 5, No. 6: For Emanuel Camevali
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1309277179576129.pdf
Modem School, V, 7, Jul 1918 Not found online
NB In Others, this poem is headed Earthy Anecdotes. Elsewhere it is found as Earthy Anecdote or Earthly (sic)
Anecdote. French Morse calls it Earthy Anecdote.
Every time the bucks went clattering
Over Oklahoma
A firecat bristled in the way.
Wherever they went.
They went clattering.
Until they swerved.
In a swift, circular line.
To the right.
Because of the firecat.
Or until they swerved.
In a swift, circular line.
To the left.
Because of the firecat.
The bucks clattered.
The firecat went leaping.
To the right, to the left.
And
Bristled in the way.
Later, the firecat closed his bright eyes
And slept.
The Emperor of Icecream
The Dial, LXXIII, 1, Jul 1922
Call the roller of big cigars.
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be the finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
21
Explanation
Others - An Anthology of the New Verse, 3 1 Oct 1917
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.3901500820632 l?urlappend=%3Bseq=l 12
Ach, Mutter,
This old, black dress —
I have been embroidering
French flowers on it.
Not by way of romance —
Here is nothing of the ideal,
Nein,
Nein .
It would have been different,
Liebchen,
If I had imagined myself.
In an orange gown.
Drifting through space.
Like a figure on the church-wall.
* Exposition of the Contents of a Cab
Poetry: A Magazine of VerseNoX. 15, No. 1
http://modiourn.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686500812500.pdf
Victoria Clementina, negress.
Took seven white dogs
To ride in a cab.
Bells of the dogs chinked.
Harness of the horses shuffled
Like brazen shells.
Oh-he-he ! Fragrant puppets
By the green lake-pallors.
She too is flesh.
And a breech-cloth might wear.
Netted of topaz and ruby
And savage blooms ;
Thridding the squawkiest jungle
In a golden sedan.
White dogs at bay.
What breech-cloth might you wear—
Except linen, embroidered
By elderly women ?
22
* Fabliau of Florida
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 15, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686500812500.pdf
Barque of phosphor
On the palmy beach.
Move outward into heaven.
Into the alabasters
And night blues .
Foam and cloud are one .
Sultry moon-monsters
Are dissolving.
Fill your black hull
With white moonlight.
There will never be an end
To this droning of the surf.
The Fence Plan
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (Mar. 24, 1900), 17. Not found online.
The Fence Plan Again
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (Apr. 13, 1900), 49-50. Not found online.
The Florist Wears Knee-Breeches
Others; a magazine of the new verse, v. II, No. 3, Mar 1916
http://hdlhandle.net/2027/ucl.b3297635
My flowers are reflected
In your mind
As you are reflected in your glass.
When you look at them.
There is nothing in your mind
Except the reflections
Of my flowers .
But when I look at them
I see only the reflections
In your mind.
And not my flowers.
It is my desire
To bring roses.
And place them before you
In a white dish.
Four Characters
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (June 16, 1900), 119-20. Not found online.
23
Frogs Eat Butterflies, Snakes Eat Frogs, Hogs Eat Snakes,
Men Eat Hogs
The Dial, LXXIII, 1, Jul 1922
http://hdl.handle. net/2027/mdp. 3901 503 1076568?urlappend^%3Bseq=127
It is true that the rivers went nosing like swine.
Tugging at banks, until they seemed
Bland belly-sounds in somnolent troughs.
That the air was heavy with the breath of these swine.
The breath of turgid summer, and
Heavy with thunder's rattapallax.
That the man who erected this cabin, planted
This field, and tended it awhile.
Knew not the quirks of imagery.
That the hours of his indolent, arid days.
Grotesque with this nosing in banks.
This somnolence and rattapallax.
Seemed to suckle themselves on his arid being.
As the swine-like rivers suckled themselves
While they went seaward to the sea-mouths.
From a Junk
The Trend, VIII, 2, Nov 1914. Not found online.
A great fish plunges in the dark.
Its fins of rutted silver; sides.
Belabored with a foamy light;
And back, brilliant with scaly salt.
It glistens in the flapping wind.
Burns there and glistens, wide and wide.
Under the five-horned stars of night.
In wind and wave. . . It is the moon.
24
fFrom the Misery of Don Joost
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 19, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686523296875.pdf
I have finished my combat with the sun;
And my body, the old animal.
Knows nothing more .
The powerful seasons bred and killed.
And were themselves the genii
Of their own ends.
Oh, but the very self of the storm
Of sun and slaves, breeding and death.
The old animal—
The senses and feeling, the very sound
And sight, and all there was of the storm—
Knows nothing more .
Gray Room
Others; a magazine of the new verse. Vol. 4, No. 2, December 1917
http://modiourn.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1309278650373004.pdf
Although you sit in a room that is gray.
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper.
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace.
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger.
Move the leaf in the bowl--
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you . . .
What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating.
f Gubbinal
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Wo\. 19, No. 1
http://modiourn.org/
http://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686523296875.pdf
That strange flower, the sun.
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.
The world is ugly.
And the people are sad.
That tuft of jungle feathers.
25
That animal eye.
Is just what you say.
That savage of fire.
That seed
Have it your way.
The world is ugly.
And the people are sad.
Gymnastic Decrepitude
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (Apr. 3, 1900), 33-34. Not found online.
Hawkins of Cold Cape
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (Mar. 10, 1900), 8-12. Not found online.
Carrol More, pseud.
Three months of unpaid advertisements, unpaid subscriptions and his own unpaid
bills for paper, ink, press work and the services of his one-legged reporter had
convinced "Sly" Hawkins of the Cold Cape Traveller that there was little or no
money in the provincial newspaper business. He used to walk up the beach of a
morning from the farm-house where he lived, through the streets of the town to
his office, and there he would swing himself to and fro in his chair and try to
think of schemes by which he could gain the chest of treasures to which he had
hoped the Traveller would be a key. In time he had lost faith in the paper and
dreamt of finding watches buried in the sand, or of coming upon a shipwreck
early in the morning, or of booming Cold Cape as a summer resort; but none of
these desirable things came about, and, as all his capital was invested in the
Traveller, he had to make the most of a bad bargain and depend upon his own
ingenuity and the ability of Barker, his reporter, to squeeze a dividend from
the "darned old sheet."
By and by the beach made him unhappy; the wind came in from the sea cold and
gusty and seemed to follow him into his office or never stop buffeting outside.
The Traveller sign rattled and creaked and got upon his nerves; he would jump
up, run to the window, and glare at it ferociously, telling Barker he thought it
was about time the thing was taken down anyhow; he would much rather have it
burning in his stove than be forced to listen to its tantalizing grating day in
and day out. But Barker would only smile and give an acquiescent shiver which
sent fresh chills down the back of the sensitive editor.
"Mr. Hawkins," said Barker one day, "John Havers of North Point seen a meteor
last night . "
"Well, is that the first meteor John Havers of North Point ever seen?"
"I don't know, Hawkins, but he did see a meteor, and he saw it last night, and
what's more the hull town o' Cold Cape ought to know it. It was a long, yellow
thing creepin' cross the sky till she dropped down in the water; and if John
Havers didn't see that meteor then I'll never take the word o' man again."
Barker got up on his one leg and looked straight at Hawkins .
"Remember, Mr. Hawkins, I've been peggin' over this town for the Traveller close
to three months without a cent o' pay. I walked out to the Peterson's th' night
Miss Peterson passed off; I stood by your house six long, wet hours while the
"Jean de Valence" heaved up and down on the rocks; I've made more news out of a
hole than you could make out o' the hull world — hanged if I don't think so; an'
26
when I tell you that John Havers o' North Point seen a meteor and seen it last
night I'm not a man to be made light of."
Hawkins listened to his staff; then he said that he believed Havers really had
seen a meteor —he'd seen one himself a year or so ago — and that if it would
give Barker any pleasure he might make an article of Haver's adventure and he
would see that the Traveller had space for it. So Barker sat down in Hawkins'
place and began to write.
As a matter of fact Hawkins was under no obligations to North Point, nor to Cold
Cape either, for all that; but if it was necessary to have deliquent subscribers
he preferred to have them within convenient distance so that he might keep his
eye on them. For this reason he was rather prejudiced against items which did
not strictly concern Cold Cape and its people. Having given his promise to
Barker, however, he was bound to spread the news of Haver's meteor.
He was startled to read, "As is well known to most of those who do us the honor
of reading the Traveller, Man is but mortal. Mountains crumble to dust, patches
of beautiful meadow turn into deserts; the very sea at whose feet we sit becomes
dry and leaves in its place a frightful chasm. And even this chasm disappears.
Where are the icebergs that have come from the North? where are the clouds that
have frequently covered the sky? Gone — all gone! Why, then, should not earth
go, too? We regret to inform our readers that something of the kind is likely to
happen within a short time. Only last night John Havers of North Point saw a
great ball of fire surrounded with immense flames pass through the sky and go
down beyond the horizon. It has not been heard of since; but it was coming
directly toward the earth and by next Tuesday's issue of the Traveller something
more definite may be expected in regard to it."
The editor of the Traveller laughed heartily. Suddenly he stopped and jumped to
his feet. He apologized to Barker and sent him out on an errand without any
explanation, pushing him out of the office and locking the door behind him. The
sign outside no longer set his ears aching; but had become a merry little jingle
that accompanied him and swung through his thoughts. The wind was no longer an
enemy but seemed more like a messenger that came with good news knocking at his
door. He rubbed his hands madly for a moment. Then giving Barker's "copy" a
fling over his shoulder he sat down, seized a pen, and, jabbing it into the ink,
wrote :
"The metropolitan journals are at the present hour given up entirely to the
great event which must be present in all minds. As is well-known the time which
observers from the day of Copernicus to that of the latest authority have
settled upon as that of the end of the earth will be at hand Wednesday of next
week — six days hence. Already vast numbers of people have gathered together in
England and upon the Continent of Europe and are proceeding to the shores of
seas, lakes, and rivers; and are resting there in order to ward off as long as
possible the dreaded fires that are finish to all. The war in China has been
discontinued; and house-boats have risen to an unheard-of value. All government
has been practically discontinued in France and Italy; and as for Austria which
has no sea-front it is said that the reservoirs of the various cities are scenes
of bloody contests. It is to be hoped, however, that that nation which has had
so long and honored an history will not allow it to be brought to a close, even
if forever, amid scenes of slaughter and crime.
"In our own country the excitement is less intense. People are quietly
abandoning their homes and preparing to part as nobly as possible. Families are
hurrying together and we read in our esteemed contemporary, the Gazette of New
York, that the railroads are taking passengers to their destinations free of
charge .
"They will continue to do so until Monday next after which all business, all
27
hopes, and, we write it with a heavy hand, all living things will come to an
end .
"Here in Cold Cape, where the sad news will be made known probably for the first
time through the enterprising columns of the Traveller, little or no preparation
has as yet been made. But the event has been foreshadowed. Last night as John
Havers, a citizen of North Point, was returning home from the house of a friend
he saw a large meteor in the western quarter of the heavens. He informs us that
it was tike ' a great ball of fire surrounded by flames. ' Could this have been
the meteor of which the Gazette contains a full account this morning?
"After describing it in detail, the Gazette says 'It passed through the sky and
went down beyond the horizon. It has not been heard of since; but it was coming
directly toward the earth, and by our next issue something more definite may be
expected in regard to it.' We, too, have observed a peculiar rumbling and
creaking outside our window all morning; just such a rumbling, in fact, as has
always accompanied or preceded a disturbance of the earth.
"We hope that in the excitement likely to follow this announcement none of the
deeds of violence reported from Austria will be repeated here. It will be
remembered that six days have yet to elapse before the crisis: during which time
the Traveller will keep its readers fully informed concerning the various
phenomena . "
The next day, Saturday, the Traveller issued the first "Extra" in its history.
During the night there had been a cave-in on the beach extending for almost
thirty feet. Hawkins described it in full, and added a scientific post-script in
which he explained how the event was connected with the ruin which would appear
everywhere before the flame was applied. The "Extra " was eagerly bought up and
read, and Hawkins was sorry he had not put the catastrophe a month off instead
of six days. The cave-in somewhat disconcerted the first arrivals on the beach,
who thought they would rather be consumed by fire than be suffocated in the
bowels of the earth; but they were too terrified to take any action.
The sign of the Traveller was beating time to Hawkins movements as he strode up
and down the office. He was waiting for Barker. Once he opened the window and
looked up and down the street. A wagon-load of furniture was going toward the
sea; and two squares away he saw a group of men talking excitedly, looking at
each other, then at the sky, and then back at each other again. He shut the
window with a laugh and seating himself at his desk, picked up the Traveller and
smilingly mused over his great article. He was reading it for the third time
when he heard Barker stumbling and thumping up the stairs.
"Well, well, don't keep me in doubt," he cried as he pulled the reporter into
the room. "Have you succeeded? Have you "
"Mr. Hawkins, I have," said Barker.
"Chickens? Cows? which, man?"
"Cows, sir. I found Havers walkin' up an' down, quoting the words of the Gazette
to himself. 'My God! My God! ' he cried. 'What shall I do? Oh, my poor, poor,
poor wife, my poor children. ' Then he put his face in his hands, an' shook his
head, an' blamed if I didn't pity him. But, of course, I bein' in the same boat
couldn't help him; and so I says to him, 'Mr. Havers, I'm a representative of
the Cold Cape Traveller an' Hawkins, the editor of that paper, thinking you
might be in distress has sent me to offer you any possible relief.' 'Oh, my
God! ' he cried, as though he would never stop. I looked about me an' seen five
as fine cows as North Point ever seen or ever hoped to see; an' so I went up to
Havers an' put my arm around his shoulder an' said softly, 'Well, John, if you
hesitate about accepting Hawkins offer as a free gift, why don't you sell him
28
something? He'll give you fifty cents cash for every one of those five cows,
durned if he won't, an' Havers cried, 'Oh, my poor chil — What? Cows? Take them,
take them, they're no good to me. ' But I slipped the money into his hands an'
Mr. Hawkins, if you'll believe me, those five cows are waiting for you
down at King's Stable this very minute." Hawkins threw his arms around the neck
of the faithful Barker. He hugged him in a fit of joy; wrung his hands and
fairly smothered the poor reporter with compliments and congratulations.
As the day passed King's stable began to take on the appearance of a menagerie.
Barker went through Cold Cape dropping tears of sympathy for the owners of
chickens — in fact, for the owners of anything purchasable. His success was
furthered by the sermon preached in the church on Sunday. The building was
crowded. People had got over their first panic and were somewhat subdued; but by
the time the Reverend Mr. Freeman had made clear the opinions of scholars and
the passages of the Bible in regard to the mournful tragedy predicted for
Wednesday, all doubt was driven from their thoughts. Mr. Hawkins was there and
prayed in a loud, frightened voice, which convinced all who heard him. Barker,
in the back of the room, echoed his words, and between them Cold Cape was
replunged into despair.
Monday and Tuesday saw the Traveller filled with long, fictitious clippings from
the Gazette. The meteor had not been heard from, but Vesuvius was in eruption.
This news sent the last Cold Capers down to the beach. Wednesday came and with
it "the final number of the Traveller ." No more news from the outside world,
according to Hawkins, was obtainable. The Continent was shrouded in gloom, and
chaos had taken possession of everything.
Towards evening the sky clouded over and hid the setting of the sun. Hawkins
wished that the heavy mist would somehow catch a tint of red, or vermilion, or,
as a last resort, pink; but at the time people had persuaded themselves
the end would come and the flames burst forth, a wretched little drizzle set in
and drenched everybody.
The rain was really welcome to some of the frightened crowd. Havers in
particular plucked up courage and said in a deep and hollow voice, "He wished it
would rain forever." There was a sort of grim humor in this which made the
Reverend Mr. Freeman shudder; but all were quite horrified when, towards
midnight. Barker, who felt that he was wet enough to resist the most scorching
heat, found a pool of water near him and stuck his wooden leg into it saying he
preferred to be on the safe side.
A few minutes before twelve o'clock somebody missed Hawkins; but such was the
intensity of the people's emotions that no search was made. It was all going to
be the same in a short time they thought and so the editor was left to his fate.
It stopped raining. The clouds on the horizon began to open and disperse and
a big, pure wind from the west had soon banked them up at a distance over the
land. The Reverend Mr. Freeman raised his hands and all Cold Cape and half of
North Point bent their heads — only Havers kept looking about him. Barker
whispered to him that Wednesday was almost gone and the poor fellow threw
himself on his knees. And when Barker's watch finally pointed to twelve and then
passed beyond, he thought of the first cock-crows that must be rising just then
from King's stable, and, drawing his wooden stump stealthily from the pool,
he hobbled away.
He did not go immediately to the village. It was very cold, but he knew it would
be far colder among these vacant deserted houses, so he built a little fire and
crouching over it managed both to warm himself and dry his clothes.
The beach between Cold Cape and North Point was a long, graceful curve and after
a while he was startled to behold the end of it where the campers were, grow
bright with flames; but he understood in a moment that they must be gathering
29
their possessions together in preparation for their return. As the darkness
broke and the first light of the day came to him he saw the people stretched out
in a long line like a caravan coming in his direction.
They reached Cold Cape just as the sun blazed out of the sea. They moved down
the main street, if, indeed, there were any other passageways fit to be called
streets, towards the office of the Traveller. There they were met by two new
things that had appeared over night: bulletin boards. The first of these read,
"Special to the Traveller . The reports that the world was coming to an end were
a newspaper fake. Far spread belief in the event dissipated by the statements of
Professor Farns, the great scientist. Restoration of public confidence."
This was taken in a dazed way, but the contents of the second board were
received with a howl of displeasure. Barker read the clumsy print in a loud
voice interrupting his speech with stamps on the sidewalk from his wooden leg.
This is what he read: "Mr. Hawkins regrets that for various reason the Traveller
will hereafter be discontinued. Mr. Hawkins also wishes to state that he is now
in a position to supply Cold Cape and vicinity with milk, cream, butter and
eggs, in short, with all the choicest products of the diary (sic) at the lowest
rates. He hopes to be ready for business by to-morrow, Friday, morning."
Barker stopped reading, his voice drowned in in the cries of the crowd. Somebody
staggered toward him with open fists, only to collapse in his arms. It was John
Havers of North Point.
Her First Escapade
The Harvard Advocate, LXVI (Jan. 16, 1899), 104-08. Not found online.
f Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 19, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686523296875.pdf
I say now, Fernando, that on that day
The mind roamed as a moth roams.
Among the blooms beyond the open sand;
And that whatever noise the motion of the waves
Made on the sea-weeds and the covered stones
Disturbed not even the most idle ear.
Then it was that that monstered moth
Which had lain folded against the blue
And the colored purple of the lazy sea.
And which had drowsed along the bony shores.
Shut to the blather that the water made.
Rose up besprent and sought the flaming red
Dabbled with yellow pollen--red as red
As the flag about the old cafe--
And roamed there all the stupid afternoon.
30
The Higher Life
The Harvard Advocate, LXVII (June 12, 1899), 123-24.
H IS vest was embroidered with a multitude of
little pink roses; and the ring on his
finger twinkled brightly.
“ Ah me,” he sighed, as he rolled a cigarette,
"how different all this is I Instead of a lime-
light I have a lamp with a green shade, instead
of a dressing-room I have a study, instead of the
boards I have instructors. And yet, if I want to
elevate myself from the variety stage to grand
opera or fine tragedy, I suppose education is
necessary. Poor me 1 ’’
He lit the cigarette reflectively and then threw
his legs over the arm of his chair. About the
room he could sec great sheets of play-bills,
simple, picturesque, curious — and yet as he
looked at them, his lips trembled a little with
scorn ; for these were the things which he had
put aside, which he had cast utterly behind him,
when he first stepped from his previously mean
theatrical life to college for the purpose of fitting
himself for what he imagined was to be some-
thing more splendid.
“Just six months,’’ he continued to himself,
"just six months that I have left them, — Rose,
and Lily and May — and — ugh — well, now they
are coming to Boston.” He puffed a faint blue
ring from his cigarette, and watched it circle
slowly to the ceiling. “ But they are no longer
part of my existence,” he went on, “ why should
I think of them? Pups! They are low, they
are vulgar — and I — six months of college and
enlightenment go a long way. In another year
I shall be able to gabble your French and
bluster your German — and perhaps the news-
papers will have a column for ‘ Bernard Travers,
opera-singer,’ where they had a line for * B.
Travers, juggler.’ Then my world will be full of
4 monsieur et mademoiselle,’ instead of Rose —
and Lily — and May.”
Rose — and Lily — and May I The roar of
the train is filling their ears. They are being
hurled hither from New York. To-morrow at
seven they come — at seven — in seven hours.
His ring sparkled vainly in the light of his fire
and he dropped his eyes to look at it ; nor could
his eyes avoid the wonderful pattern of his vest,
the stagey cut of his trousers, the brilliancy of
his smoking jacket. They, like the play-bills on
his walls, were some of the after-effects of his
marvellous youth; effects which he was endeavor-
ing at that very moment to tone down to the quiet-
ness and gentility of the artist and actor of cul-
ture; so that his train of thought was almost
interrupted by this casual glance at himself. But
when he raised his eyes he at once continued:
“ To think that I shall leave them! To think
that I shall be Siegfried or Tannhattscror almost
anything — most anything — and that they will
remain dolls and clowns and dancers.”
This thought seemed quite sufficient to him.
He grew silent and quietly pitched his cigarette
into the fire ; put out his lamp and sat down
easily into the chair gazing into the bright logs.
He was thinking very hard, very seriously and
the time went by unnoticed. The logs began to
grow dark and fill with wavering shadows, grad-
ually settling themselves and dropping an occa-
sional ember. Two — three — The logs were
going out — four. How quickly the hours were
passing. One of the logs on top crumbled and
in falling lit up the roon with a sudden glare —
perhaps I had better say a startling glare — the
chair was empty, the room was empty, the door
was open — Rose — and Lily — and May —
monsieur et mademoiselle — Rose and Lily and
May. The train, you remember, was to come at
seven.
IV. Skt'au.
31
A High-toned Old Christian Woman
The Dial, LXXIII, 1, Jul 1922
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39Q15059379241
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame .
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms.
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns .
We agree in principle. That's clear. But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle.
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness.
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last.
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began. Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed.
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade.
Proud of such novelties of the sublime.
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk.
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.
Home Again
The Trend, VIII, 2, Nov 1914
Back within the valley,
Down from the divide.
No more flaming clouds
0! the soft hillside.
And my cottage light.
And the starry night.
* Homunculus et la Belle Etoile
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 15, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686500812500.pdf
In the sea, Biscayne, there prinks
The young emerald, evening star—
Good light for drunkards, poets, widows.
And ladies soon to be married.
By this light the salty fishes
Arch in the sea like tree-branches.
Going in many directions
Up and down .
This light conducts
The thoughts of drunkards, the feelings
32
Of widows and trembling ladies.
The movements of fishes.
How pleasant an existence it is
That this emerald charms philosophers.
Until they become thoughtlessly willing
To bathe their hearts in later moonlight.
Knowing that they can bring back thought
In the night that is still to be silent.
Reflecting this thing and that.
Before they sleep.
It is better that, as scholars.
They should think hard in the dark cuffs
Of voluminous cloaks.
And shave their heads and bodies .
It might well be that their mistress
Is no gaunt fugitive phantom.
She might, after all, be a wanton.
Abundantly beautiful, eager.
Fecund,
From whose being by starlight, on sea-coast.
The innermost good of their seeking
Might come in the simplest of speech.
It is a good light, then, for those
That know the ultimate Plato,
Tranquillizing with this jewel
The torments of confusion.
Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion
Broom: An International Magazine of the Arts, Volume 2, Number 3, June 1922
http://bluemountain.princeton.edu/bluemtn/cgi-bin/bluemtn? a=d&d=bmtnaap 1 92206-0 1.2.1 5&e= en-20— 1 — txt-
txIN
You dweller in the dark cabin.
To whom the watermelon is always purple.
Whose garden is wind and moon.
Of the two dreams, night and day.
What lover, what dreamer, would choose
The one obscured by sleep?
Here is the plantain by your door
And the best cock of red feather
That crew before the clocks.
A feme may come, leaf-green.
Whose coining may give revel
Beyond revelries of sleep.
Yes, and the blackbird spread its tail.
So that the sun may speckle.
While it creaks hail.
33
You dweller in the dark cabin.
Rise, since rising will not waken.
And hail, cry hail, cry hail.
In Battle
Printed here as a separate poem, this is the 'Death's nobility again' section of "Phases," which appeared in Poetry, V, 2,
Nov 1914 along with "Peter Quince at the Clavier" and "Sunday Morning"
The New Poetiy - An Anthology, edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson, 28 Feb 1917
Death's nobility again
Beautified the simplest men.
Fallen Winkle felt the pride
Of Agamemnon
When he died .
What could London's
Work and waste
Give him—
To that salty, sacrificial taste?
What could London's
Sorrow bring—
To that short, triumphant sting?
* The Indigo Glass in the Grass
Poetry: A Magazine of VerseNoX. 15, No. 1
http://modiourn.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686500812500.pdf
Which is real—
This bottle of indigo glass in the grass.
Or the bench with the pot of geraniums, the stained mattress
and the washed overalls drying in the sun ?
Which of these truly contains the world ?
Neither one, nor the two together.
Infanta Marina
Contact, Jan 1921. Not found online.
Her terrace was the sand
And the palms and the twilight.
She made of the motions of her wrist
The grandiose gestures
Of her thought.
The rumpling of the plumes
Of this creature of the evening
Came to be sleights of sails
Over the sea.
And thus she roamed
In the roamings of her fan.
Partaking of the sea.
And of the evening.
As they flowed around
34
And uttered their subsiding sound.
Inscription for a Monument
Others; a magazine of the new verse, v. II, No. 3, Mar 1916
http ://hdl. handle.net/2027/ucl.b3297635
To the imagined lives
Evoked by music.
Creatures of horns, flutes, drums.
Violins, bassoons, cymbals —
Nude porters that glistened in Burma
Defiling from sight;
Island philosophers spent
By long thought beside fountains;
Big-bellied ogres curled up in the sunlight.
Stuttering dreams ....
In the Dead of Night
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (May 23, 1900), 83-86. Not found online.
Invective Against Swans
Contact, Jan 1921 Not found online.
The soul, 0 ganders, flies beyond the parks
And far beyond the discords of the wind.
A bronze rain from the sun descending marks
The death of summer, which that time endures
Like one who scrawls a listless testament
Of golden quirks and Paphian caricatures.
Bequeathing your white feathers to the moon
And giving your bland motions to the air.
Behold, already on the long parades
The crows anoint the statues with their dirt.
And the soul, 0 ganders, being lonely, flies
Beyond your chilly chariots, to the skies.
Iron Palings
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (June 16, 1900), 113. Not found online.
"Lettres d’un Soldat” I - IX
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 12, No. 2
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1211974909515625.pdf
Combattre avec ses freres, a sa place, a son rang, avec des yeux dessilles
espoir de la gloire et de profit, et simplement parceque telle est la loi.
sans
voila
35
le commandement que donne le dieu au guerrier Arjuna, quand celui-ci doute s'il
doit se detourner de l'absolu pour le cauchemar humain de la bataille. . . .
Simplement qu ' Arjuna bande son arc avec les autres Kshettryas ! (Preface d' Andre
Chevrillon . )
I
Jamais la majeste de la nuit ne m'apporta autant de consolation qu'en cette
accumulation d'epreuves. Venus , etincelante, m'est une amie . (21 septembre)
The spirit wakes in the night wind— is naked.
What is it that hides in the night wind
Near by it?
Is it, once more, the mysterious beaute.
Like a woman inhibiting passion
In solace?—
The multiform beauty, sinking in night wind.
Quick to be gone, yet never
Quite going!
She will leap back from the swift constellations.
As they enter the place of their western
Seclusion .
II
Ce qu'il faut, c'est reconnaitre 1 'amour et la beaute triomphante de toute
violence . (22 octobre)
Anecdotal Revery
The streets contain a crowd
Of blind men tapping their way
By inches—
This man to complain to the grocer
Of yesterday's cheese.
This man to visit a woman.
This man to take the air.
Am I to pick my way
Through these crickets?—
I, that have a head
In the bag
Slung over my shoulder!
I have secrets
That prick
Like a heart full of pins.
Permit me, gentlemen,
I have killed the mayor
And am escaping from you.
Get out of the way!
(The blind men strike him down with their sticks.)
Ill
Jusqu 'a present j 'ai possede une sagesse de renoncement , mais maintenant je veux
une sagesse qui accepte tout, en s'orientant vers 1 'action future. (31 octobre)
36
Morale
And so France feels. A menace that impends.
Too long, is like a bayonet that bends.
IV
Si tu voyais la securite des petits animaux des bois— souris, mulots ! L' autre
jour, dans notre abri de feuillage , je suivais les evolutions de ces petits
betes. Elies etaient jolies comme une estampe japonaise, avec 1 ' interieur de
leurs oreilles rose comme un coquillage . (7 novembre)
Comme Dieu Dispense de Graces
Here I keep thinking of the Primitives—
The sensitive and conscientious schemes
Of mountain pallors ebbing into air;
And I remember sharp Japonica—
The driving rain, the willows in the rain.
The birds that wait out rain in willow trees.
Although life seems a goblin mummery.
These images return and are increased.
As for a child in an oblivion:
Even by mice— these scamper and are still.
They cock small ears, more glistening and pale
Than fragile volutes in a rose sea-shell.
V
J'ai la ferme esperance; mais surtout j'ai confiance en la justice eternelle,
quelque surprise qu'elle cause a l'humaine idee que nous en avons . (26 novembre)
The Surprises of the Superhuman
The palais de justice of chambermaids
Tops the horizon with its colonnades.
If it were lost in Uebermenschlichkeit,
Perhaps our wretched state would soon come right.
For somehow the brave dicta of its kings
Make more awry our faulty human things .
VI
Bien chere mere aimee, . . . Pour ce qui est de ton coeur, j ' ai tellement
confiance en ton courage, qu'i. l'heure actuelle cette certitude est mon grand
reconfort. Je sais que ma mere a atteint a cette liberte d'ame qui permet de
contempler le spectacle universel. (7 decembre)
There is another mother whom I love,
0 chere maman, another, who, in turn.
Is mother to the two of us, and more.
In whose hard service both of us endure
Our petty portion in the sacrifice.
37
Not France! France also serves the invincible eye.
That, from her helmet terrible and bright.
Commands the armies; the relentless arm.
Devising proud, majestic issuance.
Wait now; have no rememberings of hope.
Poor penury. There will be voluble hymns
Come swelling, when, regardless of my end.
The mightier mother raises up her cry:
And little will or wish, that day, for tears.
VII
La seule sanction pour moi est ma conscience . II faut nous confier a une justice
impersonelle , independante de tout facteur humain; et a une destinee utile et
harmonieuse malgre toute horreur de forme. (15 j anvier)
Negation
Hi! The creator too is blind.
Struggling toward his harmonious whole.
Rejecting intermediate parts—
Horrors and falsities and wrongs;
Incapable master of all force.
Too vague idealist, overwhelmed
By an afflatus that persists.
For this, then, we endure brief lives.
The evanescent symmetries
From that meticulous potter's thumb.
VIII
Hier soir , rentrant dans • ma grange, ivresse , rixes, cris, chants, et
hurlements. Voila la vie! (4 fevrier)
John Smith and his son John Smith,
And his son's son John, and-a-one
And-a-two and-a-three
And-a-rum- turn-turn, and-a
Lean John, and his son, lean John,
And his lean son's John, and-a-one
And-a-two and-a-three
And-a-drum-rum-rum, and-a
Rich John, and his son, rich John,
And his rich son's John, and-a-one
And-a-two and-a-three
And-a-pom-pom-pom, and-a
Wise John, and his son, wise John,
And his wise son's John, and-a-one
And-a-two and-a-three
And-a-fee and-a-fee and-a-fee
And-a- f ee-f o-fum—
Voila la vie, la vie, la vie,
And-a- rummy- tummy- turn
And-a-rummy-tummy- turn .
IX
La mort du soldat est pres des choses naturelles . (5 mars)
38
Life contracts and death is expected.
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.
He does not become a three-days' personage.
Imposing his separation.
Calling for pomp.
Death is absolute and without memorial.
As in a season of autumn.
When the wind stops .
When the wind stops and, over the heavens.
The clouds go, nevertheless.
In their direction.
Life Is Motion
Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, Vol. 5, No. 6: For Emanuel Camevali
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1309277179576129.pdf
In Oklahoma,
Bonnie and Josie,
Dressed in calico.
Danced around a stump.
They cried,
"Ohoyaho,
Ohoo" . . .
Celebrating the marriage
Of flesh and air.
f The Load of Sugar Cane
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse No\. 19, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686523296875.pdf
The going of the glade-boat
Is like water flowing;
Like water flowing
Through the green saw-grass.
Under the rainbows;
Under the rainbows
That are like birds.
Turning, bedizened.
While the wind still whistles
As kildeer do.
When they rise
At the red turban
Of the boatman.
39
Local Color
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (May 10, 1900), 65-66. Not found online.
Lulu Gay
Contact, 1921. Not found online.
Lulu sang of barbarians before the eunuchs
Of gobs, who called her orchidean.
Sniffed her and slapped heavy hands
Upon her.
She made the eunuchs ululate .
She described for them
The manners of the barbarians
What they did with their thumbs .
The eunuchs heard her
With continual ululation.
She described how the barbarians kissed her
With their wide mouths
And breaths as true
As the gum of the gum-tree.
"Olu" the eunuchs cried. "Ululalu."
Lulu Morose
Contact, 1921. Not found online.
Is there a sharp edge?
Is there a sharp edge?
On which to lean
Like a belly puckered by a spear.
The cliffs are rough.
Are rough
And not all birds sing cuck
Sing coo, sing cuck, cuckoo.
Oh! Sal, the butcher's wife ate clams
And died amid uproarious damns .
And mother nature sick of silk
Shot lightning at the kind cow's milk.
And father nature, full of butter
Made the maelstrom oceans mutter.
Stabbing at his teat-like corns
From an ottoman of thorns .
The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad
The New Republic, XXVIII, 354, 12 Sep 1921
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uva.x0043905 19?urlappend=%3Bseq=80
The time of year has grown indifferent.
Mildew of summer and the deepening snow
Are both alike in the routine I know.
I am too dumbly in my being pent.
40
The wind attendant on the solstices
Blows on the shutters of the metropoles.
Stirring no poet in his sleep, and tolls
The grand ideas of the villages.
The malady of the quotidian . . .
Perhaps, if summer ever came to rest
And lengthened, deepened, comforted, caressed
Through days like oceans in obsidian
Horizons full of night's midsummer blaze;
Perhaps, if winter once could penetrate
Through all its purples to the final slate.
Persisting bleakly in an icy haze;
One might in turn become less diffident—
Out of such mildew plucking neater mould
And spouting new orations of the cold.
One might. One might. But time will not relent.
Meditation
Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, Vol. 4, No. 2, December 1917
http://modioum.org/
How long have I meditated, 0 Prince,
On sky and earth?
It comes to this.
That even the moon
Has exhausted its emotions .
What is it that I think of, truly?
The lines of blackberry bushes.
The design of leaves —
Neither sky nor earth
Express themselves before me...
Bossuet did not preach at the funerals of puppets.
Memorial and the Summer School
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (June 2, 1900), 97. Not found online.
Memorial Tablets
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (June 16, 1900), 113-114.
Metaphors of a Magnifico
The Little Review: A Magazine of the Arts — Making No Compromise with the Public Taste
Vol. 5, No. 2: American Number
http://modiourn.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1298919308562503.pdf
Twenty men crossing a bridge.
Into a village.
Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges.
41
Into twenty villages.
Or one man
Crossing a single bridge into a village.
This is old song
That will not declare itself . . .
Twenty men crossing a bridge.
Into a village.
Are
Twenty men crossing a bridge
Into a village.
That will not declare itself
Yet is certain as meaning . . .
The boots of the men clump
On the boards of the bridge.
The first white wall of the village
Rises through fruit-trees.
Of what was it I was thinking?
So the meaning escapes.
The first white wall of the village . . .
The fruit-trees . .
Moment of Light
Translation of "Instant de Clarte" by Jean Le Roy
Modern School , V, 10, Oct 1918 Not found online
Before me, I know more, one smaller at the first, and then one smaller still,
and
more and more, that are my son and then his sons. They lie buried in dumb sleep,
or bury themselves in the future. And for the time, just one exists: I.
Just exists and I am time,
the whole of time.
I am the whole of light.
My flesh alone, for the moment, lives,
my heart alone gives,
my eyes alone have sight.
I am emblazoned, the others, all, are black.
I am the whole of light!
And those behind and those before
are only routineers of rounding time.
In back, they lie perdu in the black: the breachless grime,
(just one exists and I am time)
of an incalculable ether that burns and stings .
My will alone commands me: I am time!
Behind they passed the point of man,
before they are not embryo--I, only, touch with prime.
And that will last long length of time,
think what you will!
I am between two infinite states
on the mid-line dividing.
42
between the infinite that waits and the long-abiding,
at the golden spot, where the mid-line swells
and yields to a supple, quivering, deep inundation.
What do we count? All is for us that live!
Time, even time, and the day's strength
My fellows, you that live around me,
are you not surprised to be supreme,
on the tense line, in this expanse
of dual circumstance?
And are you not surprised to be the base?
To know that, without you, the scale of lives
on which the eternal poising turns
would sink upon death's pitty under-place?
And are you not surprised to be the very poles?
Let us make signals in the air and cry aloud.
We must leave a wide noise tolling in the night;
and in the deep of time,
set the wide wind rolling.
[By Jean Le Roy]
Le Monocle de Mon Oncle
Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, Vol. 5, No. 1
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1309273668888629.pdf
I
"Mother of heaven, regina of the clouds,
0 sceptre of the sun, crown of the moon.
There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing.
Like the clashed edges of two words that kill."
And so I mocked her in magnificent measure.
Or was it that I mocked myself alone?
1 wish that I might be a thinking stone.
The sea of spuming thought foists up again
The radiant bubble that she was . And then
A deep up-pouring from some saltier well
Within me, bursts its watery syllable.
II
A red bird flies across the golden floor.
It is a red bird that seeks out his choir
Among the choirs of wind and wet and wing.
A torrent will fall from him when he finds.
Shall I uncrumple this much-crumpled thing?
I am a man of fortune greeting heirs;
For it has come that thus I greet the spring.
These choirs of welcome choir for me farewell.
No spring can follow past meridian.
Yet you persist with anecdotal bliss
To make believe a starry connaissance ,
III
Is it for nothing, then, that old Chinese
Sat tittivating by their mountain pools
Or in the Yangste studied out their beards?
I shall not play the flat historic scale.
You know how Utamaro's beauties sought
The end of love in their all-speaking braids.
You know the mountainous coiffures of Bath.
43
Alas! Have all the barbers lived in vain
That not one curl in nature has survived?
Why, without pity on these studious ghosts.
Do you come dripping in your hair from sleep?
IV
This luscious and impeccable fruit of life
Falls, it appears, of its own weight to earth.
When you were Eve, its acrid juice was sweet.
Untasted, in its heavenly, orchard air—
An apple serves as well as any skull
To be the book in which to read a round.
And is as excellent, in that it is composed
Of what, like skulls, comes rotting back to ground.
But it excels in this that as the fruit
Of love, it is a book too mad to read
Before one merely reads to pass the time.
V
In the high West there burns a furious star.
It is for fiery boys that star was set
And for sweet-smelling virgins close to them.
The measure of the intensity of love
Is measure, also, of the verve of earth.
For me, the firefly's quick, electric stroke
Ticks tediously the time of one more year.
And you? Remember how the crickets came
Out of their mother grass, like little kin
In the pale nights, when your first imagery
Found inklings of your bond to all that dust.
VI
If men at forty will be painting lakes
The ephemeral blues must merge for them in one.
The basic slate, the universal hue.
There is a substance in us that prevails.
But in our amours amorists discern
Such fluctuations that their scrivening
Is breathless to attend each quirky turn.
When amorists grow bald, then amours shrink
Into the compass and curriculum
Of introspective exiles, lecturing.
It is a theme for Hyacinth alone.
VII
The mules that angels ride come slowly down
The blazing passes, from beyond the sun.
Descensions of their tinkling bells arrive.
These muleteers are dainty of their way.
Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat
Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards.
This parable, in sense, amounts to this:
The honey of heaven may or may not come.
But that of earth both comes and goes at once.
Suppose these couriers brought amid their train
A damsel heightened by eternal bloom.
VIII
Like a dull scholar, I behold, in love.
An ancient aspect touching a new mind.
It comes, it blooms, it bears its fruit and dies.
44
This trivial trope reveals a way of truth.
Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.
Two golden gourds distended on our vines.
We hang like warty squashes, streaked and rayed.
Into the autumn weather, splashed with frost.
Distorted by hale fatness, turned grotesque.
The laughing sky will see the two of us
Washed into rinds by rotting winter rains .
IX
In verses wild with motion, full of din.
Loudened by cries, by clashes, quick and sure
As the deadly thought of men accomplishing
Their curious fates in war, come, celebrate
The faith of forty, ward of Cupido.
Most venerable heart, the lustiest conceit
Is not too lusty for your broadening.
I quiz all sounds, all thoughts, all everything
For the music and manner of the paladins
To make oblation fit. Where shall I find
Bravura adequate to this great hymn?
X
The fops of fancy in their poems leave
Memorabilia of the mystic spouts.
Spontaneously watering their gritty soils.
I am a yeoman, as such fellows go.
I know no magic trees, no balmy boughs.
No silver-ruddy, gold-vermilion fruits.
But, after all, I know a tree that bears
A semblance to the thing I have in mind.
It stands gigantic, with a certain tip
To which all birds come sometime in their time.
But when they go that tip still tips the tree.
XI
If sex were all, then every trembling hand
Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words.
But note the unconscionable treachery of fate.
That makes us weep, laugh, grunt and groan, and shout
Doleful heroics, pinching gestures forth
From madness or delight, without regard
To that first, foremost law. Anguishing hour!
Last night, we sat beside a pool of pink,
Clippered with lilies, scudding the bright chromes.
Keen to the point of starlight, while a frog
Boomed from his very belly, odious chords.
XII
A blue pigeon it is, that circles the blue sky.
On side-long wing, around and round and round.
A white pigeon it is, that flutters to the ground.
Grown tired of flight. Like a dark rabbi, I
Observed, when young, the nature of mankind.
In lordly study. Every day, I found
Man proved a gobbet in my mincing world.
Like a rose rabbi, later, I pursued.
And still pursue, the origin and course
Of love, but until now I never knew
That fluttering things have so distinct a shade.
45
A Musical Suggestion
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (Apr. 13, 1900), 49.
Night Song
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (May 10, 1900), 66. Not found online.
Kenneth Malone, pseud.
Nuances of a Theme by Williams
The Little Review: A Magazine of the Arts — Making No Compromise with the Public Taste
Vol. 5, No. 8: An American Number
http://modiourn.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1298923644312504.pdf
It ' s a strange courage
you give me, ancient star:
Shine alone in the sunrise
toward which you lend no part!
I
Shine alone, shine nakedly, shine like bronze,
that reflects neither my face nor any inner part
of my being, shine like fire, that mirrors nothing.
II
Lend no part to any humanity that suffuses
you in its own light.
Be not chimera of morning.
Half-man, half-star.
Be not an intelligence.
Like a widow's bird
Or an old horse.
The Nymph
The Harvard Advocate, LXVIII (Dec. 6, 1899), 86-87.
John Fiske Towne, pseud.
For three days I had been tramping in what seemed an unbroken wilderness. Once I
had come upon a road in which the grass had been bruised by some heavy cart, but
unwilling to be lead by anything but the attractiveness of the country, I had
turned my back on the road, crossed a field that was bright with goldenrod and
entered a pine wood which the hawks, the blue jays, the tangled foliage, and
thickets soon convinced me was as wild as I could desire.
About noonday I stopped to rest, and unstrapped the bundle of rations that I
carried over my shoulders. I had scarcely made myself comfortable on a bed of
leaves when I jumped to my feet in surprise conscious somehow that I was being
watched. The wood was quite still except for a little breeze in the trees, and
the occasional note of a distant bird.
"Hello," I cried.
There was no answer.
46
Hello," I repeated.
The bushes in front of me moved slightly and revealed a tall slim girl of about
seventeen, whose eyes were laughing merrily.
"Hello," she said.
She was dressed in a rather faded blue skirt, with a white sweater, and a spray
of eglantine in her light, touselled hair. The wind had blown a tinge of pink
into her delicate cheeks; and her eyes, as she peered at me through the bushes,
showed how mischievously she took the situation.
"Who are you ?" I asked in surprise.
"I —oh, don't you know me?"
"No. Who are you?"
"I am a nymph," she answered mysteriously, making big eyes at me and putting her
finger to her lips. "I am a nymph," she continued "in fact, I am about the only
nymph left — but who are you?"
She made a little detour around the bushes, through which she could not pass on
account of the thorns, and drew up a half dozen yards away from me. She had a
sketching pad in one hand, and a pencil was stuck in a pocket of her sweater.
"Oh, I see," she said before I could answer her; "you are a vacationist — you
are out doing the country and have come to my haunts to have your lunch.
"What delightful crackers," she went on, rummaging through my bundle, picking up
a round piece of hardtack and nibbling at it. "But I am selfish," she said, and,
putting the cracker on a leaf, she handed it to me.
"No? No cracker? Oh, but you will certainly try some of this — this"
"Beef —dry beef," I suggested.
"Charming," she exclaimed as though she were enchanted. "Well — you will have
some beef — dry beef, won't you ?" she urged, brushing it gaily aside when I
refused .
"No," I said to her, "no crackers, no dry beef, no canned beans— nothing — but if
you are really a nymph"
"Ah," she interrupted, jumping to her feet and giving her head a little toss,
"you want to have lunch with me. Well, we shall have berries," she began with a
clap of her hands .
"Yes, blackberries," I added.
She rolled her eyes.
"And mushrooms," she continued, lifting her skirt of faded blue an inch or two,
while she danced before me and sang,
"I know where the mushrooms grow-
In a dell with fern agleam, "
"And wild cherries," she put in, puckering upher mouth, "and grapes," with a
little cry of reminiscence. " What a feast we shall have," she exclaimed,
putting her foot on one of my crackers to crush it, and looking up to me for
47
permission .
I nodded to her, quite ready to let her do as she pleased.
"Now, let us write down a list, " she said, picking up her sketching pad and
taking the pencil from her sweater. "Let me see, we are to start with
blackberries." Mitres de ronce, she wrote.
"Then mushrooms, wasn't it?" Champignons.
"Ah, you know French," I exclaimed. "Now where do nymphs learn French?"
"Oh they pick it up — just pick it up, you know."
"Well, go on," I said; and she put down the wild cherries and the grapes. "But
do you live here all alone?" I asked, my curiosity getting the better of my
table manners .
"Yes," she answered, with a sad glance at the ground, " I live here all alone-
all alone in the woods — except for an occasional pedestrian. I go about "
"And in the winter"
"That's my secret."
The wind was no longer moving, but, heavy with heat, lay still and motionless
among the trees— like a giant asleep. Now and then, the stillness would be broken
by the harsh scream of some flitting jay. at which the giant, disturbed, would
turn uneasily, half rise and fall again. Or else a song sparrow in the goldenrod
at the edge of the dark trees would start up a snatch of melody and set the
giant repeating it in his sleep. Or perhaps a tanager with his glorious coat
would blaze up out of a bush near where we two were sitting and flash away into
the boughs .
So we sat. By and by I felt the eyes of the girl looking at me.
"Mures de ronce," she murmured.
"Champignons," I added.
"And wild cherries, and"
There was a voice calling through the trees. She started to her feet with the
word "grapes" on her lips.
"Dora," the voice cried.
The giant at our feet whispered "Dora — Dora — Do"
"Dora," the voice persisted.
"Dora," repeated the giant.
"Heigh-ho," cried the nymph, "I am coming, I am coming." She had got over her
first confusion and was already on the other side by the thorn bushes.
"Well," cried the voice, "be quick, we've been hunting everywhere. The potatoes
are cold, the flies are in the jelly — oh, such a lunch as you'll have ! — Here,
this way," continued the shouts, completely upsetting the quiet of the giant's
chamber. The girl was running before me; her hair struggling in the wind and her
blue skirt catching at every briar she passed. I was in close pursuit, scarcely
48
aware of what I was doing. The girl heard me and looked back.
"Mures de ronce," she cried with a tantalizing laugh.
"De ronce, de ronce," repeated the giant.
"De ronce," I added instinctively.
In and out of the trees she went, in the direction of the voice that seemed to
be guiding her. She came to an opening.
I stopped in bewilderment. Three large tents were spread out on the grass. In
front of the tents were two black kettles hanging over fires that gave a great
deal of smoke. At some distance from these kettles, at the end of the opening,
were two posts connected by a rope on which a dozen or more towels were hanging
in the sun. Then there was a spring wagon loaded with boxes, a table covered
with newly washed pots and pans, several young men with pipes in their mouths,
playing cards under a tree, and above all, fastened to a flag pole over the
middle and largest tent was a banner on which I could read "The Eureka Camping
Club of Billvilie, Mass."
O, Florida, Venereal Soil
The Dial, LXXIII, 1, Jul 1922
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp. 3901 503 1076568?urlappend=%3Bseq=l 28
A few things for themselves.
Convolvulus and coral.
Buzzards and live-moss,
Tiestas from the keys,
A few things for themselves,
Florida, venereal soil.
Disclose to the lover.
The dreadful sundry of this world.
The Cuban, Polodowsky,
The Mexican women.
The negro undertaker
Killing the time between corpses
Fishing for crawfish . . .
Virgin of boorish births.
Swiftly in the nights.
In the porches of Key West,
Behind the bougainvilleas.
After the guitar is asleep.
Lasciviously as the wind.
You come tormenting.
Insatiable ,
When you might sit,
A scholar of darkness.
Sequestered over the sea.
Wearing a clear tiara
Of red and blue and red.
Sparkling, solitary, still.
In the high sea-shadow.
49
Donna, donna, dark.
Stooping in indigo gown
And cloudy constellations.
Conceal yourself or disclose
Fewest things to the lover—
A hand that bears a thick-leaved fruit,
A pungent bloom against your shade.
Ode
I 'A night in May'
II 'A time will come to join on the shore'
III 'But not in May!'
IV 'A golden time and golden-shining hour'
Harvard Class of '01, Junior Dinner
Not published, distributed as a keepsake May 1, 1900.
f Of Heaven, Considered as a Tomb
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Vol. 19, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686523296875.pdf
What word have you, interpreters, of men
Who in the tomb of heaven walk by night.
The darkened ghosts of our old comedy?
Do they believe they range the gusty cold.
With lanterns borne aloft to light the way.
Freemen of death, about and still about
To find whatever it is they seek? Or does
That burial, pillared up each day as porte
And spiritous passage into nothingness.
Foretell each night the one abysmal night.
When the host shall no more wander, nor the light
Of the steadfast lanterns creep across the dark?
Make hue among the dark comedians.
Halloo them in the topmost distances
For answer from their icy Elysee.
* Of the Surface of Things
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Vol. 15, No. 1
http://modiourn.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686500812500.pdf
I
In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four hills
and a cloud.
II
From my balcony, I survey the yellow air,
Reading where I have written,
"The spring is like a belle undressing."
III
The gold tree is blue.
50
The singer has pulled his cloak over his head.
The moon is in the folds of the cloak.
f On the Manner of Addressing Clouds
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Vol. 19, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686523296875.pdf
Gloomy grammarians in golden gowns.
Meekly you keep the mortal rendezvous.
Eliciting the still sustaining pomps
Of speech which are like music so profound
They seem an exaltation without sound.
Funest philosophers and ponderers.
Their evocations are the speech of clouds.
So speech of your processionals returns
In the casual evocations of your tread
Across the stale, mysterious seasons. These
Are the music of meet resignation; these
The responsive, still sustaining pomps for you
To magnify, if in that drifting waste
You are to be accompanied by more
Than mute bare splendors of the sun and moon.
The Ordinary Women
The Dial, LXXIII, 1, Jul 1922
http://hdl.handle.net/2Q27/mdp. 3901 503 1076568?urlappend=%3Bseq=l 25
Then from their poverty they rose.
From dry catarrhs, and to guitars
They flitted
Through the palace walls.
They flung monotony behind.
Turned from their want, and, nonchalant.
They crowded
The nocturnal halls.
The lacquered loges huddled there
Mumbled zay-zay and a-zay, a-zay.
The moonlight
Fubbed the girandoles.
And the cold dresses that they wore.
In the vapid haze of the window-bays.
Were tranquil
As they leaned and looked
From the window-sills at the alphabets.
At beta b and gamma g.
To study
The canting curlicues
Of heaven and of the heavenly script.
And there they read of marriage-bed.
Ti-lill-o !
And they read right long.
51
The gaunt guitarists on the strings
Rumbled a-day and a-day, a-day.
The moonlight
Rose on the beachy floors.
How explicit the coiffures became.
The diamond point, the sapphire point.
The sequins
Of the civil fans!
Insinuations of desire.
Puissant speech, alike in each.
Cried quittance
To the wickless halls.
Then from their poverty they rose.
From dry guitars, and to catarrhs
They flitted
Through the palace walls.
Outside the Hospital
R. Jerries, pseud.
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX, 2, 24 Mar 1900
https://archive.Org/stream/versesfromharvar00harv#page/l 1 8/mode/l up/
See the blind and the lame at play.
There on the summer lawn —
She with her graceless eyes of clay.
Quick as a frightened fawn.
Running and tripping into his way
Whose legs are gone.
How shall she 'scape him, where shall she fly.
She who never sees ?
Now he is near her, now she is by —
Into his arms she flees.
Hear her gay laughter, hear her light cry
Among the trees .
"Princess, my captive." "Master, my king."
"Here is a garland bright."
"Red roses, I wonder, red with the Spring,
Red with a reddish light?"
"Red roses, my princess, I ran to bring.
And be your knight."
f Palace of the Babies
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Vol. 19, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686523296875.pdf
The disbeliever walked the moonlit place.
Outside of gates of hammered serafin.
Observing the moon-blotches on the walls.
The yellow rocked across the still fagades.
52
Or else sat spinning on the pinnacles.
While he imagined humming sounds and sleep.
The walker in the moonlight walked alone.
And each black window of the building balked
His loneliness and what was in his mind:
If in a shimmering room the babies came.
Drawn close by dreams of fledgling wing.
It was because night nursed them in its fold.
Night nursed not him in whose dark mind
The clambering wings of birds of black revolved.
Making harsh torment of the solitude.
The walker in the moonlight walked alone.
And in his heart his disbelief lay cold.
His broad-brimmed hat came close upon his eyes.
* The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Vol. 15, No. 1
http://modiourn.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686500812500.pdf
But not on a shell, she starts.
Archaic, for the sea.
But on the first-found weed
She scuds the glitters.
Noiselessly, like one more wave.
She too is discontent
And would have purple stuff upon her arms.
Tired of the salty harbors.
Eager for the brine and bellowing
Of the high interiors of the sea.
The wind speeds her.
Blowing upon her hands
And watery back.
She touches the clouds, where she goes.
In the circle of her traverse of the sea.
Yet this is meagre play
In the scurry and water-shine.
As her heels foam—
Not as when the goldener nude
Of a later day
Will go, like the centre of sea-green pomp.
In an intenser calm.
Scullion of fate.
Across the spick torrent, ceaselessly.
Upon her irretrievable way.
53
Part of his Education
The Harvard Advocate, LXVII, 3, 24 Apr 1899
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxuw31?urlappend=%3Bseq=91
** '\17AITER,’’ said Geoffrey, raising his fin-
* ' ger, “ bring us — er — bring us, oh,
confound it, bring us — er — some cigarettes.”
“ Cigarettes ? Of course — and — anything
else ? ”
“ Well, yes ; but you see I can’t think of it.
It begins ”
“ Creme de menthe ? ” interrupted Billy at his
elbow.
“ Exactly,” laughed Geoffrey. “ Terrible
name to say out loud, is n’t it ? ”
“Oh,” said the waiter, resting his fat, good-
natured fists on the edge of the table, and lean-
ing over confidentially, “it’s this way. Some
say cream d’mouth, others say crame de mint,
but to me, ah,” twirling his moustache, “ to me
it ’s creme de la creme.”
“Gad,” exclaimed Billy, with a laugh, “what
wit, what cleverness 1 But do hurry up.” Then
the waiter winked and bowed and toddled away
like an uneasy porpoise. “ That ’s just the kind
of people you run across, Geoff,” continued
Billy, “ meek, heavenly faces, but devilish
tongues. But, of course, if you want to knock
the dust off yourself, you’ve got to be ready
for some awful slick things, you know.”
Geoffrey was scratching a match up and
down the side of a match box on the table, still
smiling at the waiter’s quip. He had started
out with Billy to see the side of life that gave
other fellows so much sport ; the side of life he
had never seen. And he had selected as a
starting-point a barroom where they had music
and singing, and pictures of fighting cocks and
pugilists. The room, as he found it, was
crowded with coarse, rough faces ; and the
ceiling, lighted up with clusters of vari-colored
globes of incandescent light, was scarcely visi-
ble through the clouds of smoke that had risen
during the course of the evening from the suffo-
cating pipes and cigars of the drinkers.
He had been rather shocked, when he first
entered the place, at the sight of the pianist on
the platform, with his dark hair combed pompa-
dour, and a pipe in his mouth. The crowd was
repulsive to him, but he resolved that if other
fellows could come there and sit elbow to elbow
with those ragged beings, evening after evening,
he certainly could stand it for a single hour.
The professor at the piano was racing through
a tremendous tune and the banjo near him
thrilled and rattled with a volume of clattering
notes and chords. Everybody seemed to be satis-
fied, drinking in the glamor and excitement
almost as greedily as they did their beer.
Geoffrey, however, waited impatiently for the
waiter, bracing himself against any familiarity
and endeavoring to suppress his qualms at the
filthiness of his surroundings.
The waiter came puffing between the tables,
holding the glistening, green glasses high in the
air, followed by a shower of sighs and smacking
lips.
“ For heaven’s sake,” Geoffrey burst out, “ is
this a menagerie, a ”
“ Sh 1 ” Billy hastened, clapping his hand over
his mouth. “ Take it easy old man, you must n’t
mind them. They ’re like thirsty flowers long-
ing for dew. Let them go.”
“ But can’t they be decent, can’t they be
men ? ” This time he was interrupted by the
roaring of the piano and the arrival of the
waiter. The waiter put the glasses on the table,
one after the other, rolling his eyes. Geoffrey
felt smothered with the vexation that filled him.
He looked up — and as quickly dropped his
eyes with a furious blush. He saw that the
whole room was looking at him and his com-
panion.
“ Now, see here, Geoff,” said Billy, quietly,
“ you ’ve got to get used to this. It ’s only the
beginning. Why, great goodness, it ’s nothing
at all. Don’t let a little guying take your nerve.
Besides, it’s well meant. These people don’t
often see the real creme de la creme,” he went
on, raising his glass, half as a challenge to the
crowd, and taking a sip, “ come, cheer up, show
that you’re not confined to teas and card
parties.”
“ Ugh,” Geoffrey answered, “you may call me
weak, perhaps; but it is impossible for me to
stand all this gaping."
54
“ Silence, everybody,” cried the waiter.
“ Silence, all around. I have the pleasure of
announcing that we will now be favored with
the latest topical song. And,” with another
wink, “it’s a corker.”
The professor rolled off a prelude that made
Billy’s head ring. Then a barkeeper took his
stand on the platform and began his song.
Notwithstanding the smoke and closeness, his
tenor voice was rich and not unpleasant. The
first verse told about a dear, old-fashioned
homestead far away. The conventional flowers
of popular rhetoric were all there, and when he
had gone through the eight lines he stepped
forward and continued the chorus softly,
“Oh! down beneath the willows,
Where the water to the mill goes,
With many rills and rillows,
I met a charming maid.”
Everybody was silent. Geoffrey’s face was
twitching but he kept still until the singer
reached the second chorus,
“Oh ! down beneath the willows,
We two became playfellows,
Avoided sorrow’s shallows,
And in sweet fancy strayed.”
“ Billy, Billy,” he broke out, “ I cannot
stand this. By heaven, it’s profanation.”
“ Sh,” said Billy, again reassuring him.
‘‘Don’t interrupt the man.”
The barkeeper with his tenor voice began the
third verse. The room was under his influence
and most of those who understood his words
were affected by the sorrowful tale. He told
how he had been true to the “charming maid,”
how he had avowed his love, how she had
returned it — and then, as is usual with lovers in
fiction and mythology,
“ Oh 1 down beneath the willows,
On flower-covered pillows,
While tears streamed forth in billows,
Sweet Eveline was laid.”
Geoffrey jumped to his feet. “ Was there ever
such an outrage before,” he cried. “ Billy this
is unbearable.” Both Billy and the waiter tried
to quiet him. But he continued, “ These
wretches jest with the most delicate of human
emotions; they are brutal, hard barbarians.”
He was struggling in Billy’s hands. The crowd,
who had given the barkeeper tremendous
applause, were still guffawing and stamping.
One of them rose to his feet and kissed his
rough hand airily, saying, “ Oh ! here ’s to sweet,
sweet Eveline ” ; another leered at the bar-
keeper and cried, “ Oh, Eveline ” ; and out of a
corner, a mocking voice sang, “ Down, oh, down
beneath the willows.”
At this moment, the waiter noticed Geoffrey’s
agitation and disgust, and eager for a practical
joke at his expense, waited until the crowd about
him had fallen into the ordinary jumble of
conversation and then resolved to put his plan
into execution. “ H’m, h’m 1” he cried once
more, “ Everybody, attention. We have here,”
pointing to Geoffrey who shrank from him, “ we
have here a boy wonder,” applause and delec-
table whispers of “ creme de la creme.” “ This
boy,” continued the waiter, half out of breath,
“ was raised at home with ma — ma and the
girls,” cries of “ Hurrah,” and “ Speech,
speech.” “But I’m merely here to introduce
him.” With a sweep of his hand, “ Behold 1 ”
Geoffrey was pulled to his feet, his eyes flashing,
his cheeks burning. Billy, who in his heart
was really enjoying Geoffrey’s rage, thinking
that he was now about to learn a lesson at first
hand, did not offer to get him out of his awk-
ward position. Geoffrey stood up straight and
defiant, with his features sunken into a hard,
firm composure. “ Gentlemen,” he began.
Tremendous applause and whispers of “Ladies
first, please.” “Gentlemen” he went on with
determination, ignoring the interruption, “ it
gives me deep pleasure — ” shuffling of feet,
“it gives me deep pleasure to be able to say
how much I despise you all.” A silence fol-
lowed the sneer and passion with which he said
this. The professor came to his relief with an
impudent tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum on the
piano. A huge breath seemed to be taken. “ I
say I despise you, yes, everyone of you. This
grime and foulness are the elements in which
you seek relaxation from your day’s work — if
any of you are honest enough to work by day.
Here in this glare you lose sight of all that is
best in life, you pervert pure emotions, you
55
become pigs — pigs." The waiter whistled and
the crowd began to take a delight in goading
Geoffrey further on in his harangue. He lifted
up his creme de menthe to make a gesture and
the liquor flew out of the glass in a bright,
iridescent spray.
“ Oh, rainbows, rainbows,” cried the profes-
sor from his platform.
“Yes, rainbows," answered Geoffrey, all
restraint leaving him, his face furious with
anger, “ rainbows, all of you, jewels and pearls.”
The crowd jeered him as though he were a
child. Then he took the empty glass in his
hand and raising it above his head he hurled it
to the floor with a crash.
“ Oh, come on banjy,” said the professor to
his companion, “ let the fool be bounced. He ’s
a crazy blubberer. Let ’s strike up.” He began
lightly, so as to win over the attention of the
ruffianly crowd. Then the banjo joined him
and together they began to swing along through
a melody.
“ Let ’s be jolly,” somebody shouted from a
corner. “ Let the kid alone."
The waiter diplomatically got in front of Geof-
frey and Billy pulled him to his seat. The
waiter stood there and screened the two from the
rest of the crowd. The professor still continued
to play and the banjo to twirl. “ Ain’t it bully,"
said a little, dried-up, old man with a red nose.
“ It ’s so much better than excitement — espe-
cially,” with a slight cough, “about ‘the most
delicate of human emotions ’ et cetera.”
“ Tra-la-la-te-tum-tum,” added another.
Then the waiter moved away and Geoffrey’s
head could be seen buried in his arms on the
table ; his shoulders shaking with sobs ; Billy
trying to comfort him.
“ Brace up, old man, brace up Geoff. They ’re
good people. Perhaps they ’re rough, but they ’re
hearty too. Show them the blood that ’s in you
and let the water dry up.”
The intrepid waiter caught the humor of the
situation and sang out in a whisper to the crowd,
“ While tears streamed forth in billows
Exactly as I said.”
Geoffrey heard him in his wretchedness and
listened. There was no response. The crowd
scowled at the waiter and were silent. They
felt a sympathy with the boy, even if he had
defied and slandered them ; indeed they had not
felt the sting of what he had said, because they
were blunt and open-hearted. They had come
to the barroom purposely to meet and to make
friends, not to be disturbed. When Geoffrey
heard this silence, he at once understood the
situation, and all the folly and madness of his
tirade swept through him like a wave of shame.
He jumped to his feet looking Billy square in
the eyes ; then he turned once more to the
expectant crowd. The professor noticed the
sudden lull of conversation and seeing Geoffrey
standing up, stopped playing.
“ Fellows," said the boy, “ when a person
comes to a beer joint, he ought n’t to order
creme de manthe.” “ Creme de la creme,”
interrupted the waiter, but was at once himself
interrupted with shouts of “ Oh, go bury yourself,
fatty, go run off.” “ Well,” continued Geoffrey,
“ I was wrong, I was silly — a silly baby. Now
fellows,” with a gesture toward the bar, “ we ’ll
all get up and drink three big beers all around,
at my expense — one to myself, one to you,
and — and — one to sweet Eveline.”
The crowd rose, the waiters scurried about
and soon bumper followed bumper. Then
Geoffrey left his table and went through the
room talking with his new-found friends. Up
on the platform, the professor resumed his pipe,
the banjo began to rattle again and Billy watched
Geoffrey, smiling quietly and triumphantly.
It was not long before a new song was started
— a song that first wavered in a boyish voice
but soon rose strongly and without coldness or
restraint. The whole soul of the singer seemed
to be poured into his effort, and Billy felt a
quick twinge of sorrow and regret. But when
the chorus came, he waited with the rest of the
crowd, and despite the smoke and the closeness,
joined the outburst that suddenly shook the
room when the singer reached his ballad’s end.
And even after the noise subsided, above the
chatter the professor could be heard still linger-
ing over the last notes, slowly and perhaps
unconsciously.
IV. Stevens.
56
* Peter Parasol
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Vol. 15, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686500812500.pdf
Aux taureaux Dieu comes donne
Et sabots durs aux chevaux ....
Why are not women fair.
All, as Andromache—
Having, each one, most praisable
Ears, eyes, soul, skin, hair?
Good God ! That all beasts should have
The tusks of the elephant.
Or be beautiful
As large, ferocious tigers are.
It is not so with women.
I wish they were all fair.
And walked in fine clothes.
With parasols, in the afternoon air.
Peter Quince at the Clavier
Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, Vol. 1, No. 2, Aug. 1915
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1308772273368753.pdf
I
Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.
Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel.
Here in this room, desiring you.
Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk.
Is music. It is like the strain
Waked in the elders by Susanna:
Of a green evening, clear and warm.
She bathed in her still garden, while
The red-eyed elders, watching, felt
The basses of their beings throb
In witching chords, and their thin blood
Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.
II
In the green water, clear and warm,
Susanna lay.
She searched
The touch of springs.
57
And found
Concealed imaginings .
She sighed.
For so much melody.
Upon the bank, she stood
In the cool
Of spent emotions .
She felt, among the leaves.
The dew
Of old devotions .
She walked upon the grass.
Still quavering.
The winds were like her maids.
On timid feet.
Fetching her woven scarves.
Yet wavering.
A breath upon her hand
Muted the night.
She turned —
A cymbal crashed.
And roaring horns .
III
Soon, with a noise like tambourines.
Came her attendant Byzantines .
They wondered why Susanna cried
Against the elders by her side;
And as they whispered, the refrain
Was like a willow swept by rain.
Anon, their lamps' uplifted flame
Revealed Susanna and her shame.
And then, the simpering Byzantines,
Fled, with a noise like tambourines.
IV
Beauty is momentary in the mind —
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.
The body dies; the body's beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
The cowl of Winter, done repenting.
So maidens die, to the auroral
Celebration of a maiden's choral.
Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings
Of those white elders; but, escaping.
Left only Death's ironic scraping.
Now, in its immortality, it plays
58
On the clear viol of her memory.
And makes a constant sacrament of praise.
Phases
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Vol. 5, No. 2: War Poems Prize Awards Number
http://modiourn.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1201899301250000.pdf
I. There's a little square in Paris
There's a little square in Paris,
Waiting until we pass.
They sit idly there.
They sip the glass.
There's a cab-horse at the corner.
There's rain. The season grieves.
It was silver once.
And green with leaves .
There's a parrot in a window.
Will see us on parade.
Hear the loud drums roll—
And serenade.
II. This was the salty taste of glory
This was the salty taste of glory.
That it was not
Like Agamemnon's story.
Only, an eyeball in the mud.
And Hopkins,
Flat and pale and gory!
III. But the bugles, in the night
But the bugles, in the night.
Were wings that bore
To where our comfort was;
Arabesques of candle beams.
Winding
Through our heavy dreams;
Winds that blew
Where the bending iris grew;
Birds of intermitted bliss.
Singing in the night's abyss;
Vines with yellow fruit.
That fell
Along the walls
That bordered Hell.
IV. Death's nobility again
Death's nobility again
Beautified the simplest men.
59
Fallen Winkle felt the pride
Of Agamemnon
When he died .
What could London's
Work and waste
Give him—
To that salty, sacrificial taste ?
What could London's
Sorrow bring—
To that short, triumphant sting?
* The Place of the Solitaires
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Vol. 15, No. 1
http://modiourn.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686500812500.pdf
Let the place of the solitaires
Be a place of perpetual undulation.
Whether it be in mid-sea
On the dark, green water-wheel.
Or on the beaches.
There must be no cessation
Of motion, or of the noise of motion.
The renewal of noise
And manifold continuation;
And, most, of the motion of thought
And its restless iteration.
In the place of the solitaires.
Which is to be a place of perpetual undulation.
The Plot against the Giant
Others - An Anthology of the New Verse, 3 1 Oct 1917
http://hdl.handle.net/2Q27/mdp.3901 500820632 l?urlappend=%3Bseq=l 15
FIRST GIRL
When this yokel comes maundering
Whetting his hacker,
I shall run before him.
Diffusing the civilest odors
Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers.
It will check him.
SECOND GIRL
I shall run before him.
Arching cloths besprinkled with colors
As small as fish-eggs.
The threads
Will abash him.
THIRD GIRL
Oh, la . . . le pauvre !
60
I shall run before him.
With a curious puffing.
He will bend his ear then.
I shall whisper
Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals.
It will undo him.
* Ploughing on Sunday
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Vol. 15, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686500812500.pdf
The white cock's tail
Tosses in the wind.
The turkey-cock's tail
Glitters in the sun.
Water in the fields.
The wind pours down.
The feathers flare
And bluster in the wind.
Remus, blow your horn !
I'm ploughing on Sunday,
Ploughing North America.
Blow your horn!
Tum-ti-tum,
Ti-tum- turn- turn !
The turkey-cock's tail
Spreads to the sun.
The white cock's tail
Streams to the moon.
Water in the fields.
The wind pours down.
Political Interests
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (Mar. 24, 1900), 17-18. Not found online.
The Present Cheer
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (May 23, 1900)J 81-82. Not found online
61
Primordia
Soil, I, 2, Jan 1917
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ucl.Sc221 384?urlappend=%3Bseq=140
In the Northwest
1 .
All over Minnesota,
Cerise sopranos.
Walking in the snow.
Answer, humming.
The male voice of the wind in the dry leaves
Of the lake-hollows .
For one.
The syllables of the gulls and of the crows
And of the blue-bird
Meet in the name
Of Jalmar Lillygreen.
There is his motion
In the flowing of black water.
2 .
The child's hair is of the color of the hay in the haystack, around
which the four black horses stand.
There is the same color in the bellies of frogs, in clays, withered
reeds, skins, wood, sunlight.
3.
The blunt ice flows down the Mississippi,
At night.
In the morning, the clear river
Is full of reflections.
Beautiful alliterations of shadows and of things shadowed.
4 .
The horses gnaw the bark from the trees.
The horses are hollow.
The trunks of the trees are hollow.
Why do the horses have eyes and ears?
The trees do not.
Why can the horses move about on the ground?
The trees cannot.
The horses weary themselves hunting for green grass.
The trees stand still.
The trees drink.
The water runs away from the horses.
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.
Dee, dum, diddle, dee, dee, diddle, dee, da.
5.
The birch trees draw up whiteness from the ground.
In the swamps, bushes draw up dark red.
Or yellow.
62
0, boatman.
What are you drawing from the rain-pointed water?
0, boatman.
What are you drawing from the rain-pointed water?
Are you two boatmen
Different from each other?
In the South
6 .
Unctuous furrows.
The ploughman portrays in you
The spring about him:
Compilation of the effects
Of magenta blooming in the Judas-tree
And of purple blooming in the eucalyptus—
Map of yesterday' s earth
And of to-morrow's heaven.
7 .
The lilacs wither in the Carolinas.
Already the butterflies flutter above the cabins .
Already the new-born children interpret love
In the voices of mothers.
Timeless mother.
How is it that your aspic nipples
For once vent honey?
The pine-tree sweeten: my body.
The white iris beautifies me.
The black mother of eleven children
Hangs her quilt under the pine-trees.
There is a connection between the colors.
The shapes of the patches.
And the eleven children . . .
Frail princes of distant Monaco,
That paragon of a parasol
Discloses
At least one baby in you.
9.
The trade-wind jingles the rings in the nets around the racks by the docks on
Indian River.
It is the same jingle of the water among the roots under the banks of the
palmettoes ,
It is the same jingle of the red-bird breasting the orange-trees out of the
cedars .
Yet there is no spring in Florida, neither in boskage perdu, nor on the nunnery
beaches .
Pursuit
The Harvard Advocate, LXVIII (Oct. 18, 1899), 19-20. Not found online.
63
Quatrain
'Go not, young cloud'
The Harvard Advocate, LXVIII (Nov. 13, 1899), 63. Not found online.
Go not, young cloud, too boldly through the sky.
To meet the morning light;
Go not too boldly through that dome on high
For eastward lies the night.
Quatrain
'He sought the music'
Henry Marshall, pseud.
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (June 2, 1900), 110. Not found online.
Records of Our Times
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (Mar. 10, 1900), 1-2. Not found online.
The Retiring Board
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (Mar. 10, 1900), 1. Not found online.
The Revelation
The Harvard Advocate, LXVIII (Nov. 13, 1899), 54-56. Not found online.
Seclusion
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (June 16, 1900), 1 14. Not found online.
The Silver Plough-boy
Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, Vol. 1, No. 2, Aug. 1915
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1308772273368753.pdf
A black figure dances in a black field.
It seizes a sheet— from the ground, from a bush— as if spread there by some wash-
woman for the night.
It wraps the sheet around its body, until the black fi-
gure is silver.
It dances down a furrow, in the early light, back of
a crazy plough, the green blades following.
How soon the silver fades in the dust ! How soon the
black figure slips from the wrinkled sheet How
softly the sheet falls to the ground !
64
Six Significant Landscapes
Others: a magazine of the new verse, V. II, No. 3, Mar 1916
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ucl.b3297635
I
An old man sits
In the shadow of a pine tree
In China.
He sees larkspur.
Blue and white.
At the edge of the shadow.
Move in the wind.
His beard moves in the wind.
The pine tree moves in the wind.
Thus water flows
Over weeds .
II
The night is of the color
Of a woman's arm:
Night, the female.
Obscure ,
Fragrant and supple.
Conceals herself,
A pool shines.
Like a bracelet
Shaken in a dance .
III
I measure myself
Against a tall tree.
I find that I am much taller.
For I reach right up to the sun.
With my eye;
And I reach to the shore of the sea
With my ear.
Nevertheless, I dislike
The way the ants crawl
In and out of my shadow.
IV
When my dream was near the moon.
The white folds of its gown
Filled with yellow light.
The soles of its feet
Grew red.
Its hair filled
With certain blue crystallizations
From stars.
Not far off.
V
Not all the knives of the lamp-posts.
Nor the chisels of the long streets.
Nor the mallets of the domes
65
And high towers.
Can carve
What one star can carve.
Shining through the grape-leaves.
VI
Rationalists, wearing square hats.
Think, in square rooms.
Looking at the floor.
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles .
If they tried rhomboids.
Cones, waving lines, ellipses—
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon—
Rationalists would wear sombreros.
Smoking in Brooks House
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (Apr. 13, 1900), 50. Not found online.
f The Snow Man
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Vol. 19, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686523296875.pdf
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice.
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind.
In the sound of a few leaves.
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow.
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
66
Song
'Ah, yes! beyond these barren walls'
The Harvard Advocate LXIX, 1, March 10, 1900, 5
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd. 32044 107293250?urlappend=%3Bsea=l 7
https://archive.Org/stream/versesfromharvar00harv#page/74/mode/2up/
https://theadvocateblogdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2012/ll/photo-161.ipg
Ah, yes! beyond these barren walls
Two hearts shall in a garden meet.
And while the latest robin calls.
Her lips to his shall be made sweet.
And out above these gloomy tow'rs
The full moon tenderly shall rise
To cast its light upon the flow'rs.
And find him looking in her eyes.
Song
'She loves me or loves me not'
The Harvard Advocate, LX VI, 10, 13 Mar 1899
https://theadvocateblogdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2012/ll/photo-15.ipg
She loves me or loves me not.
What care I? —
The depth of the fields is just as sweet.
And sweet the sky.
She loves me or she loves me not.
Is that to die? —
The green of the woods is just as fair.
And fair the sky.
Song
'There are great things doing'
Others: a magazine of the new verse, v. II, No. 3, Mar 1916
http://hdlhandle.net/2027/ucl.b3297635
There are great things doing
In the world.
Little rabbit.
There is a damsel.
Sweeter than the sound of the willow.
Dearer than shallow water
Flowing over pebbles .
Of a Sunday,
She wears a long coat.
With twelve buttons on it.
Tell that to your mother.
67
Sonnet
'Cathedrals are not built along the sea'
Harvard Monthly, LXVII1 (May 1899), 95. Not found online.
Unsigned.
Samuel French Morse wrote: This poem is by Stevens, although he is not credited with authorship. In a letter to Bernard
Heringman, Stevens admitted authorship, and noted that Santayana had seen the poem, and wrote "Cathedrals by the
Sea (Reply to a Sonnet beginning 'Cathedrals Are Not Built along the Sea')," which appeared in A Hermit of Carmel
And Other Poems (Scribners, 1901), p. 122. It should be noted that Robert Buttel also identified the sonnet as probably
by Stevens, although he was unable to verify the fact.
Sonnet
'Come, said the world'
East & West, XXVII, I, May 1900
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc 1 ,c3466627?urlappend=%3Bseq=2 1 7
Come, said the world, thy youth is not all play.
Upon these hills vast palaces must rise.
And over this green plain that calmly lies
In peace, a mighty city must have sway.
These weak and murmuring reeds cannot gainsay
The building of my wharves; this flood that flies
Unfathomed clear must bear my merchandise.
And sweep my burdens on their seaward way.
No, cried my heart, this thing I cannot do.
This is my home, this plain and water clear
Are my companions faultless as the sky—
I cannot, will not give them up to you.
And if you come upon them I shall fear.
And if you steal them from me I shall die.
Sonnet
'If we are leaves that fall'
The Harvard Monthly, XXVIII (Mar. 1899), 31. Not found online
If we are leaves that fall upon the ground
To lose our greenness in the quiet dust
Of forest-depths; if we are flowers that must
Lie torn and creased upon a bitter mound.
No touch of sweetness in our ruins found;
If we are weeds whom no one wise can trust
To live an hour before we feel the gust
Of Death, and by our side its last, keen sound;
Then let a tremor through our briefness run.
Wrapping it in with mad, sweet sorcery
Of love; for in the fern I saw the sun
Take fire against the dew; the lily white
Was soft and deep at morn; the rosary
Streamed forth a wild perfume into the light.
68
Sonnet
'I strode along my beaches...'
John Morris 2nd pseud.
Havard Monthly, XXVIII, 5, Jul 1899, 188 Not found online
I strode along my beaches like a sea.
The sand before me stretching firm and fair;
No inland darkness cast its shadow there
And my long step was gloriously free.
The careless wind was happy company
That hurried past and did not question where;
Yet as I moved I felt a deep despair
And wonder of the thoughts that came to me.
For to my face the deep wind brought the scent
Of flowers I could not see upon the strand;
And in the sky a silent cloud was blent
With dreams of my soul's stillness; and the sand.
That had been naught to me, now trembled far
In mystery beneath the evening star.
Sonnet
'Lo, even as I passed'
R. Jerries pseud.
The Harvard Advocate, Vol. LXIX, No. 5 (May 10, 1900)
https://theadvocateblogdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2012/ll/photo-17.ipg
Lo, even as I passed beside the booth
Of roses, and beheld them brightly twine
To damask heights, taking them as a sign
Of my own self still unconcerned with truth;
Even as I held up in hands uncouth
And drained with joy the golden-bodied wine.
Deeming it half-unworthy, half divine.
From out the sweet-rimmed goblet of my youth.
Even in that pure hour I heard the tone
Of grievous music stir in memory.
Telling me of the time already flown
From my first youth. It sounded like the rise
Of distant echo from dead melody.
Soft as a song hear far in Paradise.
Sonnet
'There shines the morning star'
The Harvard Advocate, LXVII, 2, 10 Apr 1899
https://archive. 0 rg/stream/versesfromharvarOOharv#page/l 60/mode/ 1 up/
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxuw31?urlappend=%3Bseq=18
There shines the morning star! Through the forlorn
And silent spaces of cold heaven's height
Pours the bright radiance of his kingly light.
Swinging in revery before the morn.
69
The flush and fall of many tides have worn
Upon the coasts beneath him, in their flight
From sea to sea ; yet ever on the night
His clear and splendid visage is upborne.
Like this he pondered on the world's first day.
Sweet Eden's flowers heavy with the dew;
And so he led bold Jason on his way
Sparkling forever in the galley's foam;
And still he shone most perfect in the blue.
All bright and lovely on the hosts of Rome.
Stars at Tallapoosa
Broom: An International Magazine of the Arts, Volume 2, Number 3, June 1922
http://bluemountain.princeton.edu/bluemtn/cgi-bin/bluemtn? a=d&d=bmtnaap 1 92206-0 1.2.1 5&e= en-20— 1 — txt-
txIN
The lines are straight and swift between the stars.
The night is not the cradle that they cry.
The criers, undulating the deep-oceaned phrase.
The lines are much too dark and much too sharp.
The mind herein attains simplicity.
There is no moon, no single, silvered leaf.
The body is no body to be seen
But is an eye that studies its black lid.
Let these be your delight, secretive hunter.
Wading the sea-lines, moist and ever-mingling.
Mounting the earth-lines, long and lax, lethargic.
These lines are swift and fall without diverging.
The melon-flower nor dew nor web of either
Is like to these. But in yourself is like :
A sheaf of brilliant arrows flying straight.
Flying and falling straightway for their pleasure.
Their pleasure that is all bright-edged and cold ;
Or, if not arrows, then the nimblest motions.
Making recoveries of young nakedness
And the lost vehemence the midnights hold.
Street Songs
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX, 3, 3 Apr 1900
https://archive.Org/stream/versesfromharvar00harv#page/116/mode/2up/
(The Beggar does not appear in this anthology, but does appear in the original issue of Harvard Advocate', image at
https://theadvocateblogdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2012/ll/capture-d ecc81cran-2012-ll-19-acc80- 10-5 1-07. png l
I The Pigeons
Over the houses and into the sky
And into the dazzling light.
Long hosts of fluttering pigeons fly
Out of the blackened night.
Over the houses and into the sky
On glistening wings of white.
Over the city and into the blue
70
From ledge and tower and dome.
They rise and turn and turn anew.
And like fresh clouds they roam.
Over the city and into the blue
And into their airy home.
II The Beggar
Yet in this morn there is a darkest night.
Where no feet dance or sweet birds ever rise.
Where fancy is a thing that soothes--and lies.
And leads on with mirages of light.
I speak of her who sits within plain sight
Upon the steps of yon cathedral . Skies
Are naught to her; and life a lord that buys
And sells life, whether sad, or dark, or bright.
The carvings and beauty of the throne
Where she is sitting, she doth meanly use
To win you and appeal. All rag and bone
She asks with her dry, withered hand a dreg
Of the world's riches. If she doth abuse
The place, pass on. It is a place to beg.
TIT Statuary
The windy morn has set their feet to dancing —
Young Dian and Apollo on the curb.
The pavement with their slender forms is glancing.
No clatter doth their gaiety disturb.
No eyes are ever blind enough to shun them.
Men wonder what their jubilance can be.
No passer-by but turns to look upon them —
Then goes his way with all his fancy free.
IV The Minstrel
The streets lead out into a mist
Of daisies and of daffodils —
A world of green and amethyst.
Of seas and of uplifted hills.
There bird-songs are not lost in eaves.
Nor beaten down by cart and car.
But drifting sweetly through the leaves.
They die upon the fields afar.
Nor is the wind a broken thing
That faints within hot prison cells.
But rises on a silver wing
From out among the heather bells.
71
Sunday Morning
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Vol. 7, No. 2: Prize Awards Number
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/12Q18993058125Q0.pdf p31
Eight sections were written (eventually appearing in Stevens' Collected Poems in their original form) but only five
stanzas were printed in Poetry’ in the order: I, VIII, IV. V, VII; but numbered I-V and with a minor difference in the text.
I
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair.
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug, mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe.
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead.
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound.
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
II
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries: "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering;
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."
We live in an old chaos of the sun.
Or old dependency of day and night.
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free.
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky.
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink.
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
Ill
She says: "I am content when wakened birds.
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?"
There is not any haunt of prophecy.
Nor any old chimera of the grave.
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home.
Nor visionary South, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
72
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds.
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.
IV
She says, "But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss."
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her.
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths—
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness—
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to bring sweet-smelling pears
And plums in ponderous piles. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.
V
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun—
Not as a god, but as a god might be.
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise.
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice.
The windy lake wherein their lord delights.
The trees, like seraphim, and echoing hills.
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn—
And whence they came and whither they shall go.
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.
73
Tattoo
Others: a magazine of the new verse, v. II, No. 3, Mar 1916
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ucl.b3297635
The light is like a spider.
It crawls over the water.
It crawls over the edges of the snow.
It crawls under your eyelids
And spreads its webs there -
Its two webs .
The webs of your eyes
Are fastened
To the flesh and bones of you
As to rafters or grass.
There are filaments of your eyes
On the surface of the water
And in the edges of the snow.
Tea
Rogue, I, 1, 15 Mar 1915
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.3901 500820632 l?urlappend=%3Bseq=l 14
When the elephant ' s-ear in the park
Shriveled in frost.
And the leaves on the paths
Ran like rats.
Your lamplight fell
On shining pillows.
Of sea-shades and sky-shades.
Like umbrellas in Java.
f Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Vol. 19, No. 1
http://modiourn.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686523296875.pdf
Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.
What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?
Out of my mind the golden ointment rained.
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.
74
Theory
Others - An Anthology of the New Verse, 3 1 Oct 1917
http://hdl.handle.net/2Q27/mdp.39Q 1500820632 l?urlappend=%3Bseq=l 13
I am what is around me.
Women understand this.
One is not duchess
A hundred yards from a carriage.
These, then, are portraits:
A black vestibule leading to a wrought-iron grille;
A high bed sheltered by a canopy and curtains;
A row of amber statuettes .
These are merely instances.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, Vol. 4, No. 2, December 1917
http://modjourn.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1309278650373004.pdf
I
Among twenty snowy mountains
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn wind
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one .
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one .
V
I do not know which to prefer--
The beauty of inflexions
Or the beauty of innuendos.
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
75
VII
0 thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
1 know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too.
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight.
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him.
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
for blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
76
Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise
A one-act verse play
Poetry, a Magazine of Verse, VIII, 4, Jul 1916
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1212149523703125.pdf
The characters are three Chinese , two negroes and a girl.
The scene represents a forest of heavy trees on a hilltop in eastern
Pennsylvania. To the right is a road, obscured by bushes. It is about four
o'clock of a morning in August, at the present time.
When the curtain rises, the stage is dark. The limb of a tree creaks. A negro
carrying a lantern passes along the road. The sound is repeated. The negro comes
through the bushes, raises his lantern and looks through the trees. Discerning a
dark object among the branches , he shrinks back, crosses stage, and goes out
through the wood to the left.
A second negro comes through the bushes to the right. He carries two large
baskets , which he places on the ground just inside of the bushes. Enter three
Chinese , one of whom carries a lantern . They pause on the road.
Second Chinese . All you need.
To find poetry.
Is to look for it with a lantern. [The Chinese laugh.]
Third Chinese . I could find it without.
On an August night.
If I saw no more
Than the dew on the barns .
[The Second Negro makes a sound to attract their attention. The three
Chinese come through the bushes. The first is short, fat, quizzical , and of
middle age. The second is of middle height, thin and turning gray; a man of
sense and sympathy . The third is a young man, intent, detached . They wear
European clothes.]
Second Chinese. [Glancing at the baskets.]
Dew is water to see.
Not water to drink:
We have forgotten water to drink.
Yet I am content
Just to see sunrise again.
I have not seen it
Since the day we left Pekin.
It filled my doorway.
Like whispering women.
First Chinese. And I have never seen it.
If we have no water.
Do find a melon for me
In the baskets.
[The Second Negro, who has been opening the baskets , hands the First
Chinese a melon.]
First Chinese . Is there no spring?
[The negro takes a water bottle of red porcelain from one of the baskets and
77
places it near the Third Chinese.]
Second Chinese. [To Third Chinese.] Your porcelain
water bottle.
[One of the baskets contains costumes of silk , red , blue and green. During the
following speeches , the Chinese put on these costumes , with the assistance of
the negro, and seat themselves on the ground.]
Third Chinese. This fetches its own water.
[Takes the bottle and places it on the ground in the center of the stage.]
I drink from it, dry as it is.
As you from maxims, [To Second Chinese.]
Or you from melons. [To First Chinese.]
First Chinese. Not as I, from melons.
Be sure of that.
Second Chinese. Well, it is true of maxims.
[He finds a book in the pocket of his costume, and reads from it.]
"The court had known poverty and wretchedness; humanity had invaded its
seclusion, with its suffering and its pity."
[The limb of the tree creaks.]
Yes: it is true of maxims.
Just as it is true of poets.
Or wise men, or nobles.
Or jade.
First Chinese. Drink from wise men? From jade?
Is there no spring?
[Turning to the negro, who has taken a jug from one of the baskets.]
Fill it and return.
[The negro removes a large candle from one of the baskets and hands it to the
First Chinese ; then takes the jug and the lantern and enters the trees to the
left. The First Chinese lights the candle and places it on the ground near the
water bottle . ]
Third Chinese . There is a seclusion of porcelain
That humanity never invades.
First Chinese. [With sarcasm.] Porcelain!
Third Chinese . It is like the seclusion of sunrise.
Before it shines on any house.
First Chinese . Pooh !
Second Chinese . This candle is the sun ;
This bottle is earth:
It is an illustration
Used by generations of hermits.
The point of difference from reality
Is this :
That, in this illustration.
The earth remains of one color—
It remains red.
It remains what it is.
But when the sun shines on the earth.
In reality
It does not shine on a thing that remains
What it was yesterday.
78
The sun rises
On whatever the earth happens to be.
Third Chinese . And there are indeterminate moments
Before it rises.
Like this, [With a backward gesture.]
Before one can tell
What the bottle is going to be—
Porcelain, Venetian glass,
Egyptian . . .
Well, there are moments
When the candle, sputtering up.
Finds itself in seclusion, [He raises the candle in the air. ]
And shines, perhaps, for the beauty of shining.
That is the seclusion of sunrise
Before it shines on any house. [Replacing the candle.]
First Chinese. [Wagging his head.] As abstract as porcelain.
Second Chinese . Such seclusion knows beauty
As the court knew it.
The court woke
In its windless pavilions.
And gazed on chosen mornings.
As it gazed
On chosen porcelain.
What the court saw was always of the same color.
And well shaped.
And seen in a clear light. [He points to the candle.]
It never woke to see.
And never knew.
The flawed jars.
The weak colors.
The contorted glass.
It never knew
The poor lights. [He opens his book significantly.] .
When the court knew beauty only.
And in seclusion.
It had neither love nor wisdom.
These came through poverty
And wretchedness.
Through suffering and pity. [He pauses.]
It is the invasion of humanity
That counts .
[The limb of the tree creaks. The First Chinese turns, for a moment, in the
direction of the sound.]
First Chinese. [Thoughtfully. ] The light of the most tranquil candle
Would shudder on a bloody salver.
Second Chinese. [With a gesture of disregard.] It is the invasion
That counts .
If it be supposed that we are three figures
Painted on porcelain
As we sit here.
That we are painted on this very bottle.
The hermit of the place.
Holding this candle to us.
Would wonder;
But if it be supposed
79
That we are painted as warriors.
The candle would tremble in his hands;
Or if it be supposed, for example.
That we are painted as three dead men.
He could not see the steadiest light.
For sorrow.
It would be true
If an emperor himself
Held the candle.
He would forget the porcelain
For the figures painted on it.
Third Chinese. [Shrugging his shoulders.] Let the candle shine for the
beauty of shining.
I dislike the invasion
And long for the windless pavilions.
And yet it may be true
That nothing is beautiful
Except with reference to ourselves.
Nor ugly.
Nor high, [Pointing to the sky.]
Nor low. [Pointing to the candle.]
No: not even sunrise.
Can you play of this [Mockingly to First Chinese . ']
For us? [He stands up.]
First Chinese. [Hesitatingly. ] I have a song
Called Mistress and Maid.
It is of no interest to hermits
Or emperors.
Yet it has a bearing;
For if we affect sunrise.
We affect all things.
Third Chinese. It is a pity it is of women.
Sing it.
[He takes an instrument from one of the baskets and hands it to the First
Chinese , who sings the following song, accompanying himself , somewhat
tunelessly, on the instrument. The Third Chinese takes various things out of the
basket for tea. He arranges fruit. The First Chinese watches him while he plays.
The Second Chinese gazes at the ground. The sky shows the first signs of
morning . ]
First Chinese . The mistress says, in a harsh voice,
"He will be thinking in strange countries
Of the white stones near my door.
And I— I am tired of him."
She says sharply, to her maid,
"Sing to yourself no more."
Then the maid says, to herself,
"He will be thinking in strange countries
Of the white stones near her door ;
But it is me he will see
At the window, as before.
"He will be thinking in strange countries
Of the green gown I wore .
He was saying good-by to her."
The maid drops her eyes and says to her miistress.
80
I shall sing to myself no more.
Third Chinese . That affects the white stones.
To be sure. [They laugh.]
First Chinese. And it affects the green gown.
Second Chinese. Here comes our black man.
[The Second Negro returns , somewhat agitated , with water but without his
lantern. He hands the jug to the Third Chinese. The First Chinese from time to
time strikes the instrument. The Third Chinese, who faces the left,
peers in the direction from which the negro has come]
Third Chinese. You have left your lantern behind you.
It shines, among the trees.
Like evening Venus in a cloud-top.
[The Second Negro grins but makes no explanation . He seats himself behind the
Chinese to the right.]
First Chinese . Or like a ripe strawberry
Among its leaves. [They laugh.]
I heard tonight
That they are searching the hill
For an Italian.
He disappeared with his neighbor's daughter.
Second Chinese. [Confidingly. ] I am sure you heard
The first eloping footfall.
And the drum
Of pursuing feet.
First Chinese. [Amusedly.] It was not an elopement.
The young gentleman was seen
To climb the hill.
In the manner of a tragedian
Who sweats .
Such things happen in the evening.
He was
Un miserable .
Second Chinese. Reach the lady quickly.
[The First Chinese strikes the instrument twice as a prelude to his narrative.]
First Chinese . There are as many points of view
From which to regard her
As there are sides to a round bottle. [Pointing to the water
bottle . ]
She was represented to me
As beautiful.
[They laugh. The First Chinese strikes the instrument, and looks at the Third
Chinese, who yawns.]
First Chinese. [Reciting.] She was as beautiful as a porcelain water
bottle .
[He strikes the instrument in an insinuating manner.]
First Chinese . She was represented to me
As young.
81
Therefore my song should go
Of the color of blood.
[He strikes the instrument. The limb of the tree creaks. The First Chinese
notices it and puts his hand on the knee of the Second Chinese , who is seated
between him and the Third Chinese , to call attention to the sound. They are all
seated so that they do not face the spot from which the sound comes. A dark
object, hanging to the limb of the tree, becomes a dim silhouette . The sky grows
constantly brighter. No color is to be seen until the end of the play.]
Second Chinese. [To First Chinese.] It is only a tree
Creaking in the night wind.
Third Chinese. [Shrugging his shoulders.] There would be no creaking
In the windless pavilions.
First Chinese. [Resuming.] So far the lady of the present ballad
Would have been studied
By the hermit and his candle
With much philosophy;
And possibly the emperor would have cried,
"More light!"
But it is a way with ballads
That the more pleasing they are
The worse end they come to;
For here it was also represented
That the lady was poor—
The hermit's candle would have thrown
Alarming shadows.
And the emperor would have held
The porcelain in one hand . . .
She was represented as clinging
To that sweaty tragedian.
And weeping up the hill.
Second Chinese. [With a grimace.] It does not sound like an elopement.
First Chinese . It is a doleful ballad.
Fit for keyholes .
Third Chinese . Shall we hear more?
Second Chinese . Why not?
Third Chinese . We came for isolation.
To rest in sunrise.
Second Chinese. [Raising his book slightly.] But this
will be a part of sunrise.
And can you tell how it will end ?—
Venetian,
Egyptian,
Contorted glass . . .
[He turns toward the light in the sky to the right, darkening the candle with
his hands . ]
In the meantime, the candle shines, [Indicating the sunrise.]
As you say, [To the Third Chinese.]
For the beauty of shining.
First Chinese. [Sympathetically. ] Oh! it will end badly.
The lady's father
82
Came clapping behind them
To the foot of the hill.
He came crying,
"Anna, Anna, Anna!" [Imitating.]
He was alone without her.
Just as the young gentleman
Was alone without her:
Three beggars, you see.
Begging for one another.
[The First Negro , carrying two lanterns , approaches cautiously through the
trees. At the sight of him, the Second Negro, seated near the Chinese , jumps to
his feet. The Chinese get up in alarm. The Second Negro goes around the Chinese
toward the First Negro. All see the body of a man hanging to the limb of the
tree. They gather together, keeping their eyes fixed on it. The First Negro
comes out of the trees and places the lanterns on the ground. He looks at the
group and then at the body.]
First Chinese. [Moved.] The young gentleman of the ballad.
Third Chinese. [Slowly, approaching the body.] And the end of the ballad.
Take away the bushes .
[The negroes commence to pull away the bushes.]
Second Chinese . Death, the hermit.
Needs no candle
In his hermitage.
[The Second Chinese snuffs out the candle. The First Chinese puts out the
lanterns . As the bushes are pulled away, the figure of a girl, sitting half
stupefied under the tree, suddenly becomes apparent to the Second Chinese and
then to the Third Chinese. They step back. The negroes move to the left. When
the First Chinese sees the girl, the instrument slips from his hands and falls
noisily to the ground. The girl stirs.]
Second Chinese. [To the girl.] Is that you, Anna?
[The girl starts. She raises her head, looks around slowly, leaps to her feet
and screams.]
Second Chinese. [Gently. ] Is that you, Anna?
[She turns quickly toward the body, looks at it fixedly and totters up the
stage . ]
Anna. [Bitterly.] Go.
Tell my father:
He is dead.
[The Second and Third Chinese support her. The First Negro whispers to the First
Chinese , then takes the lanterns and goes through the opening to the road, where
he disappears in the direction of the valley.]
First Chinese. [To Second Negro.] Bring us fresh water
From the spring.
[The Second Negro takes the jug and enters the trees to the left. The girl comes
gradually to herself . She looks at the Chinese and at the sky. She turns her
back toward the body, shuddering, and does, not look at it again.]
83
Anna. It will soon be sunrise.
Second Chinese . One candle replaces
Another .
[The First Chinese walks toward the bushes to the right. He stands by the
roadside, as if to attract the attention of anyone passing.]
Anna. [Simply.] When he was in his fields,
I worked in ours—
Wore purple to see;
And when I was in his garden
I wore gold ear-rings .
Last evening I met him on the road.
He asked me to walk with him
To the top of the hill.
I felt the evil.
But he wanted nothing.
He hanged himself in front of me.
[She looks for support. The Second and Third Chinese help her toward the road.
At the roadside , the First Chinese takes the place of the Third Chinese . The
girl and the two Chinese go through the bushes and disappear down the road. The
stage is empty except for the Third Chinese . He walks slowly across the stage,
pushing the instrument out of his way with his foot. It reverberates . He looks
at the water bottle.]
Third Chinese . Of the color of blood . . .
Seclusion of porcelain . . .
Seclusion of sunrise . . .
[He picks up the water bottle.]
The candle of the sun
Will shine soon
On this hermit earth. [Indicating the bottle.]
It will shine soon
Upon the trees.
And find a new thing [Indicating the body.]
Painted on this porcelain, [Indicating the trees.]
But not on this. [Indicating the bottle.]
[He places the bottle on the ground. A narrow cloud over the valley becomes red.
He turns toward it, then walks to the right. He finds the book of the Second
Chinese lying on the ground, picks it up and turns over the leaves.]
Red is not only
The color of blood.
Or [Indicating the body.]
Of a man's eyes.
Or [Pointedly.]
Of a girl's.
And as the red of the sun
Is one thing to me
And one thing to another.
So it is the green of one tree [Indicating.]
And the green of another.
Which without it would all be black.
Sunrise is multiplied.
Like the earth on which it shines.
By the eyes that open on it.
Even dead eyes.
As red is multiplied by the leaves of trees.
84
[Toward the end of this speech, the Second Negro comes from the trees to the
left, without being seen. The Third Chinese, whose back is turned toward the
negro, walks through the bushes to the right and disappears on the road. The
negro looks around at the objects on the stage. He sees the instrument , seats
himself before it and strikes it several times, listening to the sound. One or
two birds twitter . A voice, urging a horse, is heard at a distance . There is the
crack of a whip. The negro stands up, walks to the right and remains at the side
of the road. The curtain falls slowly. ]
To the Morn
Hillary Harness, pseud.
Havard Monthly, XXiX, 3, Dec 1899
https://archive.Org/stream/harvardmonthlw00univgoog#page/nl48/mode/lup/
N.B. This poem is not included in French Morse's Checklist.
If this be night, break softly, blessed day.
Oh, let the silent throat of every bird
Swell tenderly in song, as though he heard
Some brother singing deep within thy ray!
Send but an unseen breeze aloft, away
From darkness and dull earth, to be a word,
A half-discovered sound, to make me gird
Myself, and persevere this cheerless way.
But softly, softly, thou most blessed morn.
Mine eyes too long accustomed to the dark
May fail when thou in glorious heav'n art born.
May fail against that far-entreated light.
Catch but the glimmer of a distant lark.
And drop, all blasted, at the sovereign sight.
To the Roaring Wind
Soil, I, 2, Jan 1917
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc 1 ,$c22 1384?urlappend=%3Bseq=142
What syllable are you seeking,
Vocalissimus ,
In the distances of sleep?
Speak it.
To the One of Fictive Music
The New Republic, XXXII, 415, 15 Nov 1922
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ucl.321060155288777urlannend-%3BsecF383
Sister and mother and diviner love.
And of the sisterhood of the living dead
Most near, most clear, and of the clearest bloom.
And of the fragrant mothers the most dear
And queen, and of diviner love the day
And flame and summer and sweet fire, no thread
Of cloudy silver sprinkles in your gown
Its venom of renown, and on your head
No crown is simpler than the simple hair.
Now, of the music summoned by the birth
That separates us from the wind and sea.
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Yet leaves them in us until earth becomes.
By being so much of the things we are.
Gross effigy and simulacrum, none
Gives motion to perfection more serene
Than yours, out of our imperfections wrought.
Most rare, or ever of more kindred air
In the laborious weaving that you wear.
For so retentive of themselves are men
That music is intensest which proclaims
The near, the clear, and vaunts the clearest bloom.
And of all vigils musing the obscure
That apprehends the most which sees and names.
As in your name, an image that is sure.
Among the arrant spices of the sun,
0 bough and bush and scented vine, in whom
We give ourselves our likest issuance.
Yet not too like, yet not so like to be
Too near, too clear, saving a little to endow
Our feigning with the strange unlike, whence springs
The difference that heavenly pity brings.
For this, musician, in your girdle fixed
Bear other perfumes . On your pale head wear
A band entwining, set with fatal stones.
Unreal, give back to us what once you gave:
The imagination that we spurned and crave .
The University Chorus
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (Mar. 24, 1900), 17. Not found online.
Usherships
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (May 23, 1900), 81. Not found online.
Valley Candle
Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, Vol. 4, No. 2, December 1917
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1309278650373004.pdf
My candle burned alone in an immense valley.
Beams of the huge night converged upon it.
Until the wind blew.
Then beams of the huge night
Converged upon its image.
Until the wind blew.
Vita mea
The Harvard Advocate, LXVI, 4, 28 Nov 1 898
Harvard Lyrics http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2. ark:/13960/t40r9pf2z?urlappend=%3Bseq=38
With fear I trembled in the House of Life,
Hast'ning from door to door, from room to room.
Seeking a way from that impenetrable gloom
Against whose walls my strength lay weak from strife.
All dark ! All dark ! And what sweet wind was rife
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With earth, or sea, or star, or new sun's bloom.
Lay sick and dead within the place of doom.
Where I went raving like the winter's wife.
"In vain, in vain!" with bitter lips I cried;
"In vain, in vain!" along the hallways died
And sank in silences away. Oppressed,
I wept. Lo ! through those tears the window-bars
Shone bright, where Faith and Hope like long-sought stars
First gleamed upon that prison of unrest.
Warren House Library
The Harvard Advocate, LXIX (Apr. 13, 1900), 49. Not found online.
* The Weeping Burgher
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Vol. 15, No. 1
http://modioum.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1224686500812500.pdf
It is with a strange malice
That I distort the world.
Ah ! that ill humors
Should mask as white girls.
And ah ! that Scaramouche
Should have a black barouche .
The sorry verities!
Yet in excess, continual.
There is cure of sorrow.
Permit that if as ghost I come
Among the people burning in me still,
I come as belle design
Of foppish line.
And I, then, tortured for old speech—
A white of wildly woven rings;
I, weeping in a calcined heart—
My hands such sharp, imagined things.
Who Lies Dead?
The Harvard Advocate, LXVI (Nov. 28, 1898), 57. Not found online.
The Wind Shifts
Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, Vol. 4, No. 2, December 1917
http://modjourn.org/
http://librarv.brown.edu/pdfs/1309278650373004.pdf
This is how the wind shifts:
Like the thoughts of an old himan.
Who still thinks eagerly
And despairingly.
The wind shifts like this:
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Like a human without illusions.
Who still feels irrational things within her.
The wind shifts like this:
Like humans approaching proudly.
Like humans approaching angrily.
This is how the wind shifts:
Like a human, heavy and heavy.
Who does not care.
The Worms at Heaven’s Gate
Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, Vol. 3, No. 1 : A Competitive Number, 1 July 1916
http://modioum.org/
Out of the tomb, we bring Badroulbadour ,
Within our bellies, we her chariot.
Here is an eye. And here are, one by one.
The lashes of that eye and its white lid.
Here is the cheek on which that lid declined.
And, finger after finger, here, the hand.
The genius of that cheek. Here are the lips.
The bundle of the body and the feet.
Out of the tomb we bring Badroulbadour.
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